DEV Community: LookPrep

The Pro refresh moved her face. We fixed the mouth overnight

LookPrep — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:07:44 +0000

Saturday we shipped #333: 536 active demo, hero, and article AFTER files refreshed with reviewed Pro outputs. Comparisons now use the same synthetic source portraits we generated from. File weight dropped from about 171 MB to about 76 MB.

Then the blonde pixie face moved.

Lip color shifted. Artificial gloss showed up. Framing drifted. Her brief is the opposite: keep original pixels outside a fixed mouth region, transfer only the lip contour. Owner flagged it. Production also caches stable image paths for eight days, so replacing bytes alone can leave returning browsers on the old set.

This morning #334 repaired her 74 stored looks and three homepage encodings (77 files). Other faces stayed on the Saturday batch. Shared image revision query params force browsers and the CDN off the stale paths.

Live check after Cloud Run lookprep-00369-doh took 100% traffic: all 77 versioned blonde files matched the release hashes, her original matched unchanged, homepage before/after kept face alignment, and the owner demo URL reported 17 of 17 looks ready on the revised images.

Illustrative previews, not clinical dose claims. Today's leftover was identity. The mouth can move. The rest of her face does not invent itself on a regenerate.

Both looks sit in 0.5–1 mL

LookPrep — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:26:52 +0000

On LookPrep, Russian lips and natural enhancement both publish a typical range of 0.5–1 mL. I keep seeing booking UIs that treat natural as the timid version of the same look. A smaller slider. Soft instead of Bold.

The millilitres overlap. The placement does not.

Russian is a height brief. Lifted Cupid's bow, taller upper lip from the front, flatter from the side. You are asking for silhouette in a specific direction.

Natural enhancement is conservation. Conservative volume, existing proportions, movement kept. A lot of 2026 demand is that, not a smaller copy of an older still.

If the UI maps natural to less mL of Russian, you trained people that Russian is the real look. A millilitre aimed at height is not a millilitre aimed at keeping the face they already have.

Product families (Juvéderm, Restylane, RHA, Revanesse) are how that brief gets approximated. They are not the look. LookPrep is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any manufacturer.

Why eight names, four pages

Four looks get their own definition pages because sources agree on the placement story: Russian lips, cherry lips, Cupid's bow definition, and natural enhancement. Cherry is soft central fullness with quiet corners. Cupid's bow definition is a small sharpening of the two peaks, typically 0.2–0.5 mL. Those are different jobs even when someone uses softer words for all of them.

Four other names stay selectable in the preview and do not get a page of their own, because publishing one official outcome would assert more than the evidence supports:

Butterfly lips: practitioner-education material and clinic marketing describe opposite placements under one label
Heart-shaped lips: overlaps with Russian and butterfly; sources do not draw a clean line between height and border work
Keyhole lips: agreement on a small gap at rest, disagreement on whether the 2019-era picture is still what clinics want to sell
Doll lips: not a distinct technique. Central roundness plus a defined Cupid's bow is mostly cherry plus Cupid's bow definition with a marketing name

The looks index is explicit about that split. I would rather ship the disagreement next to the name than force a single row.

Preview starts with looks

The flow is photo or demo face, then the looks you want and how much of each, then side-by-side compare. There is no package quiz before you can start. Price starts from $19 and updates with what you select.

If the first screen is Soft / Classic / Bold, natural becomes Soft and the shape brief disappears. What I want on the consult table is a labelled comparison. This height-led option next to this conservation option, on the same photo. Product family as a reference, not a prescription.

A makeup filter will give you a prettier mouth. It will not tell you whether the change came from height, from central gel, or from leaving the proportions alone.

Lip flip stays a separate choice. Eversion is muscle, not millilitres.

This is a planning visual. Not a candidate check, not tissue prediction, not the injector's technique, not a before-and-after guarantee. A qualified provider decides what is realistic and safe. Photos are private by default. You choose what to share. Deletion is available on request.

If someone says just natural, I do not put that on a smaller Russian slider. I put both looks on the same photo and look at where the volume is supposed to go.

Russian lips vs a lip flip: the names people search are not the treatments clinics mean

LookPrep — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 21:32:51 +0000

Someone sits down with a photo on their phone and asks for Russian lips and a lip flip. Same sentence. Same appointment. The injector hears two treatments. The searcher heard two names that both promised a taller upper lip.

That collision is the whole problem. Autocomplete treats "Russian lips" and "lip flip" as neighboring styles. Clinics treat them as different mechanisms, different products, and different units. If you are building a catalogue, a booking form, or a preview tool, the names are a data-model bug, not a copywriting one.

Two treatments, one search box

A lip flip is typically a neuromodulator. It relaxes the muscle that pulls the upper lip inward so the lip can evert a little. No gel is added. Nothing is measured in millilitres. The change is in how the lip sits, not how much tissue is there.

A filler look is volume placement. Gel goes into height, central fullness, or forward projection. The unit is millilitres. The product family (Juvéderm, Restylane, RHA, Revanesse) is how that placement is approximated, not the name of the look.

Collapse those into one dropdown labelled "styles" and you serve the wrong thing. A searcher typing "lip flip simulator" is often trying to see eversion on their own photo. A searcher typing "Russian lips" is asking for a taller, flatter-from-the-side shape. Those can be discussed in the same visit. They are not interchangeable, and they should not share a single slider.

LookPrep keeps them separate on purpose. On your own photo you pick named filler looks and how much of each, plus a lip flip. The demo face compares stored product and amount options instead. The flip is dosed in units because it everts the upper lip rather than adding volume.

A look is a shape brief, not a SKU

The useful model is three layers:

Look: where volume is meant to go. Height and a lifted Cupid's bow. Soft fullness in the centre. Forward projection.
Product family: the gel used to approximate that look.
Technique: how an injector actually places it, which no consumer preview can perform.

Russian lips sits in layer 1. Sources describe it consistently: 0.5-1 mL typical, height and a lifted Cupid's bow rather than a forward pout, taller from the front, flatter from the side. It is still a style name. No source LookPrep found gives a validated, standardized medical definition of the label.

"I want Russian lips" is not an order for a syringe. It is a brief about silhouette. The same brief can be approximated with more than one product family. The injector still decides what is realistic for that anatomy.

The rest of a clean catalogue is the same kind of object:

Cherry lips: soft, rounded fullness in the centre, corners left quiet.
Cupid's bow definition: 0.2-0.5 mL typical. Targeted sharpening of the two peaks, little added volume.
Natural enhancement: 0.5-1 mL typical. Conservative volume, existing proportions kept.
Doll lips: central roundness plus a strongly defined Cupid's bow. LookPrep treats this as two other styles combined, not a third technique.

Product families belong in layer 2. They are references for a consult, not the look itself. LookPrep is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any manufacturer.

Why butterfly, keyhole, and heart-shaped are fights

Some labels map to one placement. Some map to two opposite placements. Some are aliases. If you have shipped a taxonomy for user-generated tags, this is familiar: the display name is not the entity.

Butterfly lips (0.3-0.6 mL typical) is a direct contradiction, not a nuance. Practitioner-education material describes central lift with lateral bulk avoided. Clinic marketing describes volume fanning outward for width. Opposite placements, one name. Anyone asking for butterfly lips should be asked which they mean.

Keyhole lips agrees on a small visible gap at rest, with fullness either side of centre. Sources disagree on whether the style is current. 2026 trade commentary describes demand shifting toward softer, less structured results. The 2019-era picture people search is often not the version a clinic would do now.

Heart-shaped lips overlaps with Russian lips and butterfly lips. All three are described as producing a heart-shaped upper lip. What separates them in practice is how much of the effect comes from height versus border work, and sources do not draw that line consistently.

A catalogue that publishes one official butterfly or heart-shaped outcome is asserting more than the evidence supports. LookPrep leaves those three selectable in the preview and marks that sources disagree. Only four looks get their own definition pages: Russian, cherry, Cupid's bow definition, and natural enhancement. The looks index is explicit about that split. Shipping the disagreement next to the name is more honest than forcing a single row.

What a lip flip preview is actually answering

"Lip flip simulator" is a reasonable query. The question underneath is usually: if we do not add volume, and we only change how the upper lip sits, what does that look like on my face?

A filler preview answers a different question: if volume goes here, at this amount, approximated with this product family, how does the silhouette change from the front?

Both can live on one photo. Mixing the units trains the user to treat muscle change as a smaller filler.

LookPrep's flow is photo or demo face, then looks and amounts, then side-by-side compare (drag, switch, save). Catalogue drawings illustrate each shape over an untreated lip outline. They are not previews of your result. On a real photo, the useful output is a labelled comparison you can take to a consult, not a promise.

The Russian lips page is blunt about the engine limit: it can render product and dose, and a lip flip as upper-lip eversion, but it does not render vertical column placement. A preview shows the kind of change the style aims at, not the technique itself.

A makeup filter or a prompt to a general image model will give you a prettier mouth. It will not tell you whether the change came from height, from central gel, or from muscle.

What a preview can and cannot show

Can show

A planning visual of named looks on your photo or a demo face.
Side-by-side differences: height-led versus centre-led versus conservative volume.
A lip flip direction as a separate choice, because it is not filler.
The product family each look is approximated with, as a consult reference, not a prescription.
That some labels are contested, so you do not walk in assuming one TikTok still means one placement.

Cannot show

Whether you are a candidate.
How your tissue, muscle, or existing filler will actually respond.
The injector's technique, including the vertical columns often described for Russian lips.
A medical prediction, a before-and-after guarantee, or a standardized technique under a street name.

LookPrep is a planning visual. It is not medical advice. A qualified provider decides what is realistic and safe. Photos are private by default; you choose what to share; storage is encrypted and protected; deletion is available on request. Pricing starts from $19. There is no package quiz. The price updates with the looks you select.

If the line is "Russian lips and a lip flip," split it. Russian lips is a height-led filler brief (typically 0.5-1 mL): a look, not a product. A lip flip is muscle, not volume. Butterfly, keyhole, and heart-shaped are labels sources do not share.

Search boxes collapse those into adjacent autocomplete rows. Clinics, and any honest preview, have to pull them apart again. The useful artifact is not a prettier selfie. It is a labelled comparison that makes the disagreement visible before anyone books.