"Is it my face or my haircut?" is the second most common question we get, right after "is my photo stored". It's a good one. The model reads the whole image, so hair, glasses, facial hair, and makeup all count. Below is a ranking of what moves results, based on how the network reads images, followed by a ten-minute experiment that shows you your own answer.
What moves results, most to least
- Hair volume and shape. Hair is the largest high-contrast region in most photos, and the deeper layers of the network respond strongly to big silhouettes. Bangs hide the forehead and shorten the apparent face; volume widens the outline. Expect the biggest shifts here, and expect them to be even bigger in anime tests, where hair is half of a character's identity. See why anime faces are hard for AI.
- Facial hair. A beard rewrites the jaw outline and adds texture to the whole lower face. Results tend to move toward bearded or older-cast characters, sometimes decisively.
- Expression. Not styling in the usual sense, but the thing you control most. A wide smile rounds the lower face and narrows the eyes. It routinely changes the runner-up and occasionally the winner.
- Glasses. Thick, dark frames add a strong shape around the eyes and shift results noticeably. Thin or rimless frames barely register unless they reflect light.
- Makeup. Contouring changes the apparent width of the nose and the height of the cheekbones a little; eye makeup enlarges the dark region around the eyes. Everyday makeup moves results moderately; heavy stage or cosplay makeup moves them a lot, which is the point of cosplay.
- Hats and accessories. They matter only when they hide the outline of the face or cast a shadow across it.
- Color. Skin tone and hair color matter less than shape and texture, but lighting that changes color and shadow matters a lot, which is why the photo guide spends so long on light.
The ten-minute experiment
1. Take a baseline photo: neutral expression, hair pulled back, no glasses, daylight from the front. 2. Run one test and write down your top three with scores. 3. Change exactly one thing (hair down, glasses on, a smile) and take a new photo under the same light. 4. Run the same test and compare. 5. Repeat for each change you're curious about.
What stays at the top through every change is your face's core signal, the structure that no styling touches. What flips with a change is costume. Most people find that one or two characters survive everything, and that's the match to take seriously. If nothing survives, your face sits between several characters in that cast, which what the score means explains how to read.
Why this is worth knowing
It settles arguments. In a match-off with friends, standardizing styling (everyone with hair back, no glasses, neutral face) removes the biggest source of noise. It also tells you which test to bring to a party: the cast where your core signal has a clear favorite is the one where the result will feel uncanny to everyone.
For cosplayers
If you want to move toward a particular character rather than find your natural one, work from the top of the ranking down. In anime tests, the hair silhouette does most of the work. In live-action tests, brow shape and facial hair matter more than anything you can do with makeup. That order is no coincidence: it's the same order in which the network weighs those features. The face shape guide covers the one thing styling can't change much, which is the outline underneath.