What photos to upload — and what we actually check
Most photo tools tell you to upload “clear, well-lit photos” and leave it there. That’s not advice, it’s a shrug. Below are the actual numbers Mogshot runs against every photo you send — the same thresholds that decide whether a shot is used or dropped.
Last updated August 5, 2026
The six checks a photo has to pass
These run twice. Once in your browser the moment you pick a photo, so you get a verdict before anything uploads, and once on our servers as the final word. Both sides run the same math, so the browser preview is rarely wrong.
| Check | Passes if | Gets dropped |
|---|---|---|
| File format | JPG, PNG, or WEBP | Anything else — HEIC straight off an iPhone included. Re-save it as a JPG. |
| File size | Under 12MB each | Bigger files. Anything straight off your phone camera is comfortably under this. |
| Resolution | Short side of 480px or more | Smaller than 480px. Between 480 and 512 we keep it but flag it — usually a screenshot or a photo saved out of a chat app. |
| Sharpness | Score of 0.012 or higher | Below 0.012. Under 0.018 we keep it but warn you it's soft. |
| Duplicates | One copy of each shot | Near-identical frames. Burst shots two frames apart count as duplicates — they add nothing as a reference. |
| One face | All photos are the same person | Photos that don't read as you. We work on one face at a time, so a group shot with three faces is a coin flip. |
What “too blurry” actually means
“Blurry” is usually a judgement call. Here it’s a number. We convert the photo to greyscale, and for every pixel we measure how much its brightness differs from the pixel to its right and the pixel below it. Average all of those differences, divide by 255, and you get a score between 0 and 1. A sharp edge produces big neighbour-to-neighbour jumps; a soft photo produces small ones.
Below 0.012— dropped. There isn’t enough edge detail to anchor a face.
0.012 to 0.018— kept, but flagged as soft. Usable if it’s all you have.
0.018 to 0.08 — fine. This is where most normal phone photos land.
0.08 and above — genuinely crisp. These are the ones we reach for first.
One consequence worth knowing: this measures pixel detail, not photographic quality. A busy background full of hard edges can score well while your face is soft. That’s why sharpness decides what gets dropped, not what gets ranked highest.
Send 15, we use 4
You can upload up to 15 photos. We only use 4 of them as references, and we pick those 4 ourselves — in that order: anything failing a hard check is removed first, then what survives is ranked by sharpness and the top 4 go through.
So uploading more photos doesn’t make the result busier, it makes the shortlist better. If you send exactly 4, you get those 4 whether or not they’re your best. If you send 12, you get the best 4 of 12. This is the single highest-leverage thing you control.
What makes a good reference, beyond passing the checks
Passing the six checks gets a photo in. What makes it a usefulreference is different — we read each accepted photo for face angle, framing, lighting, setting, and expression, and a set that varies across those dimensions beats a set that doesn’t.
- Vary the angle. Four photos taken from the same three-quarter angle teach us one angle, four times.
- Show your face unobstructed in at least one.Sunglasses and hats aren’t disqualifying, but every obstruction is information we don’t get.
- Use daylight where you can. Not for the look — for the detail. Low light means noise, and noise reads as softness.
- Include a recent one. A sharp photo from four years and one haircut ago is a sharp photo of someone else.
- Skip heavy filters. Smoothing filters strip exactly the edge detail the sharpness check is looking for.
What we don’t do
When a photo gets rejected, the reason always points at the photo — too small, too soft, duplicate, wrong format. That’s deliberate. A photo tool that tells you what’s wrong with your face is a tool that has confused its job.
We also don’t change your face or your body. Face-similarity scores are used only to compare photos inside your own order — never to identify you against any database. Your photos aren’t used to train models, and they aren’t used in our marketing without separate written permission. Order photos are scheduled for deletion 30 days after delivery. The details are in the privacy policy.
Common questions
- How many photos should I upload?
- You can send 1 to 15. More is genuinely better, because we only keep the 4 strongest and having more to choose from raises the floor. Uploading exactly 4 means you get whatever those 4 are, sharp or not.
- Why was my photo rejected when it looks fine to me?
- Almost always sharpness or resolution. A photo can look fine at phone size and still be soft at full resolution — screenshots, chat-app re-saves, and heavy digital zoom are the usual culprits. The rejection is about pixel data, not about how you look in it.
- Do sunglasses, hats, or masks matter?
- They don't fail any hard check, but they cost you. Every reference photo that hides part of your face gives us less to work with, and the result drifts further from you.
- Can I upload photos with other people in them?
- You can, but crop yourself out first if you can. We work on one face at a time, and a frame with several faces makes it ambiguous which one to lock onto.
- Does a rejected photo mean I wasted an upload?
- No. Rejected photos don't consume anything — we just need at least one usable photo to start. Add a clearer face photo and you're fine.
Ready to see what passes?
Every photo gets a verdict in your browser before anything is uploaded — you’ll see which ones we’d keep and which ones we’d drop, with the reason.
Start with your camera roll →