Skin score
What your skin score actually means
A skin score is a cosmetic read of one photograph. It is not a grade, not a health measurement and not a comparison against other people. Read this way it is genuinely useful. Read the other way it will just make you anxious.
Free on the App Store
The seven dimensions, and what shifts each one
Dermly scores seven cosmetic dimensions from a single selfie, plus one overall number on top. The second column matters more than most people expect: it lists what moves the score without your skin changing at all.
| Dimension | What it reads | What moves it that is not your skin |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity | How even and unblemished the surface looks in this photo. | Anything sitting on the surface on the day of the scan, from a single fresh spot to leftover makeup. |
| Smoothness | Visible texture: fine lines, roughness, flaking, unevenness of the surface itself. | Hydration and the angle of the light. Hard side light carves texture that soft front light hides completely. |
| Tone | How evenly colour is distributed across the whole face. | White balance. A warm bulb, a bathroom mirror light or a sunset window shifts colour before the model ever sees it. |
| Calmness | Visible redness and irritation, most often around the nose and on the cheeks. | A hot shower, exercise, alcohol, crying, cold wind. Give your face twenty quiet minutes before scanning. |
| Pores | How visible pores are, mostly across the T zone. | Distance from the lens and how much oil has surfaced since you last washed your face. |
| Glow | Light reflection: whether the surface reads as dull and flat or luminous. | This one is the most light dependent of all seven. Flat overhead light kills glow in a face that has plenty of it. |
| Eye Area | Shadowing, puffiness and crepiness in the under eye region. | Sleep, salt, and how high above you the light source sits. |
Every observation points at a zone
A score on its own is a number with no address. Dermly attaches each observation to a real region of your own photo, so instead of reading "Pores 64" you see which part of the T zone produced that number. That is the difference between a verdict and something you can act on.
How to read a delta instead of a number
- Compare to yourself, never to anyone else. Nobody publishes a distribution of skin scores, so a leaderboard would be invented. Your only honest reference point is your own last scan.
- Hold the conditions still. Same room, same time of day, same light, same distance, bare face. Then a five point move is signal instead of weather.
- Give a change six weeks. Skin turns over slowly. A score that moves after three days of a new product moved because of the photo.
- Watch the sub scores, not the headline. An overall score that holds steady while Calmness falls and Glow rises is a real event that the summary number hides.
Skin score questions
What is a good skin score?
There is no published benchmark, and Dermly does not pretend there is one. The number is only useful against your own previous scans under similar conditions. A 71 that becomes a 76 over six weeks tells you something. A 71 on its own tells you very little, and comparing it to somebody else tells you nothing at all.
Why did my skin score drop when my skin feels fine?
Because a score reads a photograph, not your skin. Light direction, white balance, camera distance, the angle of your head and how long ago you washed your face all change the image. Most single scan swings come from the photo, not the face. Scan in the same place, at the same time of day, in the same light, and the number becomes comparable.
Does the same photo always give the same score?
Yes. The model runs at temperature zero, so re-analyzing an identical image returns identical numbers. That is deliberate: if the scoring wandered on its own, no week to week comparison would mean anything.
Why seven scores instead of one?
Because a single number hides the thing you want to see. Tone can slide while Smoothness holds steady, and those two have completely different causes and completely different answers. Seven separate dimensions let you see which part moved. The overall score sits on top as a summary, not as the verdict.
Can a skin score tell me if something is wrong with my skin?
No. All seven dimensions describe appearance in a photograph and nothing else. Dermly is not a medical device, performs no diagnosis and is no substitute for seeing a doctor. If something on your skin worries you, see a dermatologist.
See your seven scores from one selfie
Dermly is free to download on the App Store. No account, no email, no sign up. Available in 11 languages.
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