Beware to base your judgment of an anti-wrinkle / skin rejuvenation products on before and after photos provided by commercial vendors. In a strictly controlled setting of an unbiased clinical study, before&after photos might be a useful adjunct to other methods used to evaluate the efficacy of a treatment for wrinkles or skin aging. Otherwise, before & after photos are often unintentionally or intentionally misleading. In fact, some unscrupulous skin care providers have a "bag of tricks" to create a false impression of skin rejuvenation.

For instance, the position of the lighting source has a dramatic effect on how wrinkles appear to a viewer. When light comes from the side, wrinkles appear deeper, whereas placing a light source in front of the face makes wrinkles much less noticeable. You can make a little experiment to see that for yourself. Take a lamp or a flashlight and then position yourself in front of a mirror. Then place the lamp / flashlight so that the light comes to your face from the side and look in the mirror. Then do the same with light coming to your face from in the front. You face will appear "years younger" although there has been no real change in wrinkles or skin texture.

Another method involves using the light of different brightness and/or tint. Due to the nature of light waves, wrinkles and other small details are easier to notice if the light has greenish-bluish rather than yellowish-reddish tint.

On top of lighting effects, some unscrupulous beauty specialists use tightening makeup that temporarily smoothens the skin. The effect, of course is transient but long enough to take a photo.

To sum it up, unless photos come from an unbiased clinical study with full disclosure of the conditions under which they were taken, they can not be assumed to be reliable.

In some cases, a good observer may be able to tell whether a particular set of before & after photos reflect a genuine change, or a magic trick. For specific guidelines to help you be a better judge of before & after photos see Skin Rejuvenation Infopack .

What information can we use to make the right choice about using a particular skin care product or procedure? The easiest way is to simply try it and see if it works. The problem with this approach is that you spend a lot of time and money and with all the enormous variety of skin care products on the market you may never encounter right products.

One alternative is too see what other people have to say about the product. This is not always a wise choice, especially if you rely on testimonials provided by the vendor. For some products, testimonials are simply "medical fiction" supplied by ghost writers. However, even true testimonial can grossly misrepresent reality.  Consider the following scenario. One million people tried a product and fifty had an improvement (even with a sugar pill an occasional person will have an improvement). Then the testimonials of these fifty are taken and attached to the product. What do you think is the chance for an average consumer to benefit from the product? Yes, about the same as winning a lottery. As sobering as it may be, the only reliable way to find out if a product or treatment has a decent chance to work is to analyze independent medical research performed by institutions unrelated to the product's vendor. This is the only type of information used in this website.