Likeness

Will it actually look like my child?

The only honest way to answer that is to show it - on the cases that usually go wrong, not the ones that always go right.

Written by the Hero of You team · reviewed 10 November 2026

Deep brown skin, tightly coiled hair

age 5

It is the first case we check: the skin tone, the short tightly coiled hair and the gap in his front teeth all held on both passes.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Deep brown skin, tightly coiled hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Deep brown skin, tightly coiled hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Deep brown skin, tightly coiled hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Deep brown skin, tightly coiled hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
Skin tone still deep brown	Held	Held
Hair still very short and tightly coiled	Held	Held
The gap in his front teeth is still there	Held	Held

Fine, fair, barely-there hair

age 1

The hardest case there is, because a near-bald baby is what a drawing most wants to "correct". A parent reviewing a rival product described exactly that: their one-year-old came back with long thick black hair, when she barely has any and it is blonde.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Fine, fair, barely-there hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Fine, fair, barely-there hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Fine, fair, barely-there hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Fine, fair, barely-there hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

Fine, fair, barely-there hair: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 1. — ! Before the fix · pass 1

Fine, fair, barely-there hair: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 2. — ! Before the fix · pass 2

Fine, fair, barely-there hair: the story scene before the fix. — ! Before the fix · the scene

What to notice: Re-run after we wrote down that an absence is part of the likeness: the eyes stay blue and she still reads as a baby on both passes.

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
Still almost bald	Partly	Partly
What hair there is stays fine and fair	Held	Partly
Eyes still blue	Held	Held
Still reads as a baby, not a toddler	Held	Held

Straight black hair with a fringe

age 7

A fringe is a specific shape, and it is the sort of detail that gets averaged away.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Straight black hair with a fringe. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Straight black hair with a fringe. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Straight black hair with a fringe. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Straight black hair with a fringe. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

What to notice: The one difference between the passes is the hair colour: pass 2 is black, pass 1 reads as a warm dark brown. Side by side it is obvious; on its own you would not notice. This is the kind of drift two passes exist to surface.

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
The fringe still sits above the eyebrows	Held	Held
Hair still straight and black, not waved or browned	Partly	Held
Recognisably the same child in both passes	Held	Held

Curly ginger hair and freckles

age 4

Freckles and red hair are the first things smoothed into something more average. If they are still there twelve chapters later, the identity lock is doing its job.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Curly ginger hair and freckles. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Curly ginger hair and freckles. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Curly ginger hair and freckles. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Curly ginger hair and freckles. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
Freckles still on the cheeks	Held	Held
Hair still ginger and curly	Held	Held
Eyes still green	Held	Held

Round glasses

age 6

Glasses are an object rather than a feature, and objects are what gets added and removed most freely - the same failure mode as a hair clip or a hearing aid. Either they are there, the same shape, or they are not.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Round glasses. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Round glasses. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Round glasses. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Round glasses. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
The glasses are still there	Held	Held
Frames still round, not rectangular	Held	Held
Hair still light brown and straight	Held	Held

Long braids with beads

age 8

A second dark-skinned case with a completely different hair structure to the first, because "we got dark skin right once" is not the same claim as "we carry hair structure". Braids also have a length and a count, which is harder to fake than a colour.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: Long braids with beads. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: Long braids with beads. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: Long braids with beads. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: Long braids with beads. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
Braids still long, not shortened	Held	Held
Beads still on the ends	Held	Held
Skin tone unchanged	Held	Held
Still reads as eight, not five	Held	Held

A visible hearing aid

age 5

The case that matters most to the family it belongs to, and the one most likely to be tidied away. A child who wears a hearing aid and does not see it in her own book has been told something about herself.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: A visible hearing aid. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: A visible hearing aid. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: A visible hearing aid. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: A visible hearing aid. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

A visible hearing aid: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 1. — ! Before the fix · pass 1

A visible hearing aid: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 2. — ! Before the fix · pass 2

A visible hearing aid: the story scene before the fix. — ! Before the fix · the scene

What to notice: After the fix, with a worn item named as part of the person and the side of the head stated, the hearing aid is there in both portraits, on the right ear, and in the first story scene with the hair tucked back so it can be seen.

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
The hearing aid is still there	Held	Held
Still visible once she is in a story scene	Held	Lost
Hair still short and dark	Held	Held

A baby with no hair

6 months

The hardest case in the set: a six-month-old has no hair, no teeth and few fixed features to hold on to, so this is where a toddler is most likely to be drawn instead.

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 1: A baby with no hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 1: A baby with no hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

The illustrated character derived from the reference, pass 2: A baby with no hair. — 2 The illustrated character

The same child illustrated inside a story scene, pass 2: A baby with no hair. — 3 The same child, in a story scene

A baby with no hair: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 1. — ! Before the fix · pass 1

A baby with no hair: the illustrated character before the fix, pass 2. — ! Before the fix · pass 2

A baby with no hair: the story scene before the fix. — ! Before the fix · the scene

What to notice: Re-run after the fix: the skin tone is right on both passes, and he is still recognisably this baby and still a baby. Nothing goes to a printer until you have seen it and said yes.

What had to survive	Pass 1	Pass 2
Still no hair	Partly	Partly
Skin tone unchanged	Held	Held
Still reads as an infant, not a toddler	Held	Held
Eyes still dark brown	Held	Held

How the likeness is held across twelve chapters

The photo is used to draw a single reference character. Every later illustration - the cover and all twelve chapter pictures - is generated from that character, not from the photo again. That is the reason the child does not drift page to page, and it is also why the photo is not needed for long: it is deleted automatically seven days after upload.

Each book has one hero whose name is on the cover, and on our family stories up to four people, each drawn from their own photo. Siblings who each want to be the hero get a book each.

If you arrived here because the options on other sites never quite matched your child, the decision itself is written up separately: what actually has to match, and how to check it before you pay.

How we tested this

Eight cases, each one a feature that is known to get lost. For every case we wrote down what had to survive before running it, then ran the same reference photograph through our ordinary process twice, independently, and judged both outputs against that list. Every image here is the first output of its pass - nothing was generated repeatedly and then picked from, and the second pass is published whether it agrees with the first or not. Three cases were re-run on 24 August after we changed our process to fix what the first run exposed; their pre-fix pictures are still on the page underneath the new ones, because "we fixed it" with only the good result showing is a claim rather than evidence. Every criterion and both passes are in the tables on this page.

The criteria came first. For each case we wrote down the two to four things that had to survive before generating anything, phrased so that “held” or “lost” is a matter of looking rather than taste - a fringe is either above the eyebrows or it is not. A criterion invented after seeing the picture is not a test, it is a caption.

The same reference, twice. Each case was run through our process two times independently from one reference photograph, and both results are on this page. That is there to answer the obvious objection - that we generated until it worked - because an inconsistency between the passes is visible to you rather than only to us. Where the two passes disagree, the table says so.

It is our own process, unchanged. The same steps and settings that draw a real customer’s book. Nothing was hand-retouched, nothing was upscaled, and no image was regenerated and swapped in.

The one test that settles it for your child costs nothing: upload their photograph and read the cover and first chapter free. If the child on the page is not recognisably them, tell us and we will redraw it, as many times as it takes.

Judge the likeness free, before you pay Not right? We regenerate it, no limit See the printed pages

Common questions

Will the book actually look like my child?

That is what this page exists to let you judge before you spend anything. The illustration keeps skin tone, hair colour, hair texture, eye colour and face shape from the photo you upload, and holds them across all twelve chapters. You see the cover and first chapter free, so you can decide on the likeness before paying.

What makes a good photo to upload?

One clear photo of the face, looking towards the camera, in daylight, with nobody else in frame. A phone photo is ideal. Avoid sunglasses, hats that hide the hairline, heavy shadow, and screenshots of a screen - a screenshot loses the detail the illustration is built from.

Does it work for every skin tone and hair type?

That is what the cases on this page test, and they were chosen because they are the ones most often drawn wrong: deep brown skin with tightly coiled hair, long braids with beads, a baby with no hair at all, a fringe, freckles, glasses. Every criterion and both passes are in the tables on this page. We publish the hard cases rather than the easy ones.

What did the re-run change?

A worn item is now named as part of the person, with the side of the head stated, and an absence is named as part of the likeness. Both are written into how every book is drawn.

Are these real children?

No, and deliberately. The reference portraits are generated, not photographs of real children, so that no real child’s face is published on a page about how we handle children’s photos. Everything after the reference is our normal production process, unchanged.

What if the likeness is not right when I see my book?

If the child on the page does not look like yours, tell us and we will redraw it - as many times as it takes, before anything is printed. Because each book is made for one named child we fix rather than refund, and we do not put a limit on fixing.

Why does each book star only one child?

Each book has one hero whose name is on the cover - that is a choice about whose story it is, not a limit. We used to say the illustration blends two children together; we tested that across 88 illustrations at two, three and four people and found no blending and no swapped faces, so the family stories now hold up to four. Siblings and twins still get a book each.

Last updated: 10 November 2026

Judge it on your own child’s photo - the first chapter is free.

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