A pre-upload checklist for rating photos
Ten quick checks that avoid a wasted scan. The reasoning lives in the photo guide; this is the version to run in thirty seconds.
The short answer
Before you upload, check ten things: side light, flash off, camera level, enough distance, in focus, cropped to the subject, plain background, nothing identifying, your own photo, and the best of a few attempts. If all ten are true, upload. If not, fix the first one that fails.
Each item below is one line. The photo guide explains why each one matters.
Light and focus
1. Light comes from the side, from a window if possible, not from the front. 2. The flash is off. 3. The photo is in focus: tap the subject on your screen before shooting, and retake it if it looks soft at full size.
A hard front flash flattens surface detail, and the skin texture axis scores exactly that detail.
Angle, distance and framing
4. The camera is level with the subject rather than looking down. 5. You are standing back, not close, and will crop afterwards. 6. The crop is tight on the subject, with nothing else competing for attention.
Distance matters more than people expect. Researchers describe near-range portrait photographs as often carrying perspective distortion that biases how people perceive faces (Zhao and colleagues, 2019), and the same wide-angle geometry applies to any subject shot too close. Backing up and cropping is the fix.
Background and file
7. The background is plain: a wall or a sheet, with no pattern. 8. Nothing in the frame identifies you or your room, such as a tattoo, a face, mail or a window view. 9. The file is the original photo, not a screenshot of it. A screenshot throws away resolution and often adds interface clutter.
10. It is the best of a few attempts. Because the scan is free, three photos and a comparison of the breakdowns tells you more than one perfect-looking shot.
If one check fails
Fix the earliest failure first, because the early items change the rest. Bad light cannot be repaired by cropping, and a downward angle cannot be repaired by a plain background. Move to a window, turn the flash off, level the camera, step back, then retake.
Each fix maps to an axis: light to skin texture, angle and distance to shape and proportions, background and crop to the two subjective axes. If you retake and the same axis stays low, you have learned something real about that photo instead of guessing.
Make it a thirty-second routine
Read the ten items aloud once while you hold the phone, and you will find you stop needing the list within a few photos. The point is to catch the one thing you forget, which is different for everyone. For most people it is the flash or the angle.
What the checklist cannot do
It will not change who is in the photo, and it makes no promise about the score. A cleaner photo is simply a fairer one. If a result still surprises you after the ten checks, why your score changed between photos covers what else moves it. Your best scan is then ready for the AI judges or the leaderboard if you want it to go anywhere.