HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM

[nthmainneighbor]

One of the things you will notice about Dr. Cole’s website besides extremely satisfied patients, are the large, clear, detailed Patient Gallery photos.

I was recently banned from another forum for attempting to discuss my observation, that many hair transplant doctor’s websites deliberately provide small, dark, slightly out of focus Patient Gallery Images in an effort to hide details that would detract from the result if they were identified.

At the mention of this, the forum’s moderator and one of the doctors began to “foam at the mouth” like a rabid dog, declaring they’re innocence while at the same time lashing out in personal attacks. You can nearly always tell when someone has no substantive intelligent response when they lash out at you with personal attacks.

Anyway, I’m not going to rehash the details here, but I will repeat this quote posted about me by the doctor involved:

“His goal is not to illuminate and educate, but to tear down and debase.”

As a digital professional I will respond to the above allegation by providing some very useful information that I think will be helpful to prospective patients in evaluating doctor’s results imagery on the Internet.

To begin with, here are two basic, rules of thumb:

1. Doctor’s who do poor work are not going to let you see their hairlines in their Internet Patient Gallery. The hair will be styled in the photos in such a way as to hide the hairline. One exception to this relates to PhotoShopped images. I recently examined a Patient Gallery photo posted by a practice I’d never heard of, where they used the “Blur Tool” in Adobe PhotoShop to soften the hairline. Look for blurred hairlines in Internet imagery. Hairlines are the dead give away of poor work. Make a study of peoples hairlines. Notice that the gradual “feathering” of the hairline is nearly always consistent between the temple area and the hairline above the forehead area.

2. Doctors who do fair to good work will let you see their hairlines, but in small slightly dark, out of focus images. Look for lack of detail in their imagery. Brown, Black or Yellow blobs (depending on hair color) where hair should be, but very little in the way of individual discernable hairs.

I once had someone say to me, regarding the above mentioned “foaming at the mouth” doctor; “I’ve seen one of his patients in person and his hair looked pretty good! Well, anyone up for a pretty good hair transplant? I can spot one from across the room.
When pressed, a very large, excellent quality image was posted by this doctor. The work was good, but I could easily tell that it was a hair transplant because the hairline was strong and not feathered like the temple it joined. This may happen in nature in a few odd cases, but this appearance is not the norm on a natural non-transplanted head of hair.
I wondered why when pressed, he was able to produce a large, crisp, patient image even though none at all exist in the Internet Patient Gallery. Very odd. In fact there is one image in particular on his site I’d like to see in greater detail. Looks like a 4mm plug job from the 70s. Can you imagine, images so poor that a 70s 4mm plug job is difficult to spot!

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting one of Dr. Cole’s patients in person. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the work is freaking awesome. The hairline was perfect. I could not tell at all. Perfectly natural. This kind of work takes much more of any doctor’s time. Few doctors are willing to invest this effort. Instead, they simply hide behind small, poor quality Internet images in the hopes prospective patients will not suspect anything is hiding behind the lack of detail.

Perhaps some people are satisfied with good hair transplant work. If you want excellent work and an awesome undetectable hairline, I don’t think there is any doctor other than Dr’s Cole and the IHTI doctors.
You would think at least if there were a doctor anywhere near as talented as the IHTI doctors, they would at least be proud enough of their work to post large, clear and detailed images for everyone to see.

[forhair]

Thanks nthmainneighbor, i was also been attacked on other forums for trying to make the same point.
I hope your post will help patients to get a better "picture" of how a good work should look like.

[haggis]

I got them all right first time

Excellent, a superior performance--ten out of ten answers were correct.

If you got a perfect score on the first try then you're a REAL genius. But, if it took a few tries, then we congratulate you on your perseverance for it shows the CG artists are keeping you guessing. Now check out the bonus round -- if you dare!

[bird33]

thanks for the encouraging words . i have a 3 day repair scheduled with Dr . cole in sept. you have relieved some of the anxiiety

[forhair]

bird33, Good luck with your upcoming surgery!
You are in good and trusted hands

[body2hair]

nthmainneighbor, are you still banned from that forum? can you warn us from the clinics that manipulate photos?

[nthmainneighbor]

body2hair:

I can say with 100% certainty that I am still banned from that forum. I have visited there a few times since, but have not attempted to try to log back in.

I have seen PhotoShopped results images coming out of one of the large and popular, strip-only clinics. The PhotoShop "Blur Tool" is commonly used on strip-only images, in order to make the hairline appear softer. Strip hairlines often can not compete with FIT hairlines in the naturalness category. The reason is simple. A clinic that is not able to perform FIT is limited to whatever hairs are available in the strip. Commonly there are not enough fine hairs in the strip to create a soft natural looking hairline. This motivates them to modify their results images in PhotoShop so they can present images that will be competetive in the forums.

[body2hair]

wow...unbelievable!
I wish you could send me the link to the post or picture by this clinic in a private message on this board, i really want to see how they play with the photos, i also noticed that some of them do this with photoshop.

[forhair]

You can see if the photo has been manipulated with the blur tool by exposing its pixels...just download the photo and zoom in to the hairline area with "Microsoft office picture manager" (it's build-in on XP) or photoshop.
I would also be interested to see the photo...send me a PM too

[kenneth0068]

Wow, never thought about this. I am considering hair transplantation and have therefore paid a lot of attention to pictures - now even more. Thx for the heads up.

[elixir]

Losing hair is some think really common in male society, it will really effect on the personality of person

[Kane]

hibird33 wish you best of luck for your surgery and hope it successful.

[Albern]

Hello buddy,
Nice post there you have posted and shared with all of the member's of the forum.... I think that this kind of the post is helpful to all the member's of the forum..........

[dylannme]

Thank you for sharing this information to us.

[acanner]

]Hi,

Is there any one who hair transplanted in Turkey?

There is a hair transplatation site http://www.gursacekimi.com

Thanks

Arif

[antonyaaron]

i will do this hair transplantation. after i feel happy. thank you friends..

[CITNews]

Please call for CIT pricing in the month of June, 2013. Phone 678-566-1011. Ask for Parvin or Brandi.

[CITNews]

I have recently noticed before images posted by another clinic that have a marked yellow tint causing the patient to appear sickly (yellow jaundice) before their hair restoration procedure. Their after images look normal with proper skin tone.

I take the patient photos at Dr. Cole's office and I have never at any time, seen a photo come out of our cameras with a yellow tint. Besides yellow skin looking sickly, this yellow, before image anomaly can have the subliminal effect of making healthy hair appear miniaturized. For example, my hair loss began at an early age. Before there were any signs of hair loss, my hair was very dark brown, nearly black. Several years later, as my hair thinned, and miniaturized, its color changed from a very dark brown to a light brown. I thought this was caused by sun exposure, but now realize that my hair became lighter due to inherited MPB.

I downloaded the yellow before with the normal after photos posted by the other clinic to see what would happen to the side by side comparison if I color corrected the yellow tinted image. Color correction diminished the contrast. The illusion of a dramatic hair transplant result was reduced significantly.

[drcole]

photo results happen all the time. anyone can make a photo look good. only a good result can make a properly taken photo look good.

[forhair]

Prospective hair restoration patients should evaluate before and after photos with a critical eye. For instance "before" photos processed with the Adobe PhotoShop "Exposure" filter will have a characteristic yellow tint. You should compare the skin tone of before and after photos. If the before photos present a marked lighter skin tone and/or yellowish cast, generally expect the before pictures to depict hair density that appears thinner than if you were to see the patient in person. The PhotoShop Exposure filter causes the bald and thinning areas to appear more severe.
The bottom two photos demonstrate Nanogen concealer we applied to our patient's hair to illustrate its effectiveness concealing hair loss. In person, it's not perfect by any means but comes close to looking natural. The giveaway is the ill-defined hair strands, thicker than normal hair strands, or a clumpy look and a slightly dull gray-like appearance to the hair where the concealer is applied. Keep an eye out for “after” photos posted by clinics that have the aforementioned concealer characteristics. As you can see by our four way photo, concealer can make a huge difference in the appearance of “results” photos and presenting concealer as a hair transplant result is patently dishonest.
Sometimes clinics will post photos a patient took themselves, so in those cases; quality control is out of the clinic's hands. Also, patients are generally proud of their results and will upload photos that show their hair in the most positive light. As you can see from the 4 way photo of one patient taken on the same day, lighting plays a huge role in the appearance of hair coverage.
There will always be a slight difference in lighting between before and after photos. At Dr. Cole's office, we make every effort to maintain consistent lighting.