Five steps to a good photo
Stand facing a window in daylight, with no strong light behind you. Hold the phone at eye level, about an arm's length away, and look straight at it. Pull your hair off your face, take off makeup and glasses, keep a neutral expression, and turn off any beauty mode.
- 1Face a window in daylight
- 2Hold the phone at eye level, an arm's length away
- 3Pull your hair back, and take off glasses and makeup
- 4Keep a neutral expression
- 5Turn off filters, beauty mode and portrait mode
What makes a photo misleading
Warm indoor bulbs shift skin tone towards yellow. Overhead or side light casts shadows that can read as texture. Beauty filters erase the detail being measured, and makeup covers the tone and marks. A tilted or distant shot distorts proportions, which matters for reading your face shape.
- Warm bulbs
- Skin tone reads too yellow or orange
- Overhead light
- Shadows read as texture or under-eye circles
- Filters
- The texture and marks being measured disappear
- Makeup
- Tone and marks are covered
- Tilted angle
- Face shape and proportions are distorted
Taking photos to compare over time
To compare your skin from week to week, keep the conditions the same: the same window, a similar time of day, the same distance and no makeup. Otherwise you may be comparing the light rather than your skin. A scan a few weeks apart shows more than one every day.
Get a routine for your own skin
Saundarya AI is an AI skin analysis and grooming app that reads a single selfie and returns a personalised report: face shape, skin type, detected skin concerns with the visual evidence behind them, a morning and night skincare routine, product picks at three budgets, and an 8-week improvement plan.
Generic advice is a starting point. A scan reads your skin type, concerns and face shape on your own face, shows the visual evidence and a confidence score, and builds a morning and night routine around it. The first full analysis is free.
This is general cosmetic guidance, not medical advice. See a dermatologist for skin that is painful, spreading, scarring or not improving after 8-12 weeks.