How often do promo or sales pictures reflect to what you get in real life?

I bought my Dollipop Ang with the faceup and everything is pretty spot on. The one thing I noticed that was different was that the placement of her mouth (she's an anime doll) was slightly higher. She's my first and only doll and one of my anxieties was that my doll wouldn't be as glamorous as the photos but I feel like my doll looks adorable even when she's not all posed.

 

Most of the dolls I've received over the years have looked similar enough to the promo photos.

It's important to remember that there might be slight differences in the faceups due to them being hand-painted. And the colours of wigs and eyes may vary slightly due to the display settings of your monitors/screens.

 

For the actual dolls, thankfully, not very often - I seldom like the promo photo/default company faceups, so alwys look for pictures of the unplainted head before I choose a sculpt. As for pictures taken of second hand dolls - I also try to look for unpained head photos beofre I decide to buy.

For clothing items - it's more often tht it resembles the sales shots, but it does annoy me when they use "arty" photos that don't show all the details rather than including straight-on full-length shots so you can see exactly where the hem falls, what level the waist is, whether the sleeves come all the way to the wrist, or whatever, without cutesie posing or creative camera angles disrupting the view of those details.

Teddy

 

I've known about these dolls for what seems like an eternity and beyond. I don't own a lot of them, because resin is not my favorite plastic and tiny mature ones weren't a thing until much recently. I also don't purchase full-sets, accessories nor faced up dolls, so I can't really say much about that. However, sculpt-wise only, all the dolls I own so far look exactly like their promo prototype model, from photos alone. I mostly look at blank photos, or (kindly) request blank ones from their "companies," if they don't already provide some. For that reason, as well, I don't like to get a doll (of this kind) and be surprised at how different the sculpt looks IRL, than in photos. Luckily for me, so far, they've all been exactly as they looked in (blank) promo photos. (:

 

Like enzyme said, I think the blank dolls I've gotten have looked like the promo pictures and I've been very happy with them! I've only ever bought one (my first of now 4 dolls) with a company faceup. He's an Impdoll Joshua, and his promo pictures have a very muted, toned down faceup which I very much approved of. When I unboxed him, he's got a much more obvious faceup - especially obvious in the lips, which are much darker than I anticipated and I was rather put off by it at first. I do think he still looks very pretty, and at present don't have any plans to give him a new face. His body blushing (which wasn't in promo pics) on the other hand is lovely and subtle as I prefer, and I'm very happy with that.

 

So far, the only doll I've had that "expectations vs reality" moment when unboxing was my LM Rarity. Not really what I pictured? But I think it's that her company pictures have very big soft, dark eyes, and I must have been very enchanted by them. Her sculpt and even her faceup, actually, are identical to the photos, but she's got a very different look with lighter eyes! (The character I shelled as Rarity has a specific eye color, otherwise I'd buy her some brown eyes in a heartbeat LOL.)

And I actually think I like my GuardLove Hana in person more than the product pictures. The company default is pretty, but for some reason she really stole my heart with the look I gave her! ;_;

 

The only full-set doll I've bought which was not the same at home is my Dollzone Violeta-2 Halloween Edition. She had a very beautiful grey and red face-up ont the promo pictures. And when I opened the box, surprise ! The face-up is pink and blue. XD She is still very pretty and I love her so much. But well, I didn't expect that lol.
Actually, SOOM make a lot of photoshop pictures in their promo pages so you must be careful when you look at their pictures.

 

I've had a 50/50 case, my Dream Valley Dolls' body blushing look exactly like the pictures, but the face ups were not as nice. I've heard people got better face ups than me though, so maybe my artists were just having bad days! The sculpting looks exactly like the pictures, though, gorgeous.

Most of my Fairyland dolls with company face ups do look like their photos, and the fullset outfits (of the few I've gotten) do seem to be pretty accurate. I have gotten one Gem of Dolls fullset, Chris, and he looks very accurate, thankfully, because the photos helped me figure out how to put his complicated outfit on!

 

For dolls I would say that the promo pictures are usually pretty accurate. They are sometimes a bit limited, showing only one pose, one angle or not even the full doll, but that's what owner pictures are for.
For face ups, less so. I don't think it's so much a matter on intentionally misrepresenting something but more a combination of the fact that the dolls are hand painted, sometimes by several different people and lighting/monitor settings that can make things look different not just between screen and real life, but also between different screens. And the promo pictures may have been taken a long time before the doll you just ordered is cast and ready to be painted, so even if it is the same artist, their supplies, style and the directions form the company may have changed.

Clothes, eyes, wigs and shoes are tricky, it's always a bit of a lottery. For accessories like that I think the only universal truths are that you get what you pay for and any time you see a disclaimer about details that may differ and colours that may vary, take them seriously.
As always; do your research. If a company has a history of sending out stuff with questionable quality, the comunity usually knows about it.

 

I find it depends on the company. A lot of Volks dolls I didn’t like because of their pictures, then I saw them in person at a dolpa and turns out the pics just weren’t great.

A good way to see for sure is to look for owner’s pics of the doll you’re interested in if you can. If you put out an ask to see x doll as well someone will probably respond with them.

 

I have a couple of Ringdolls and Volks Dollfie Dreams and fortunately for me, the dolls I've ordered all looked like their promotional images except for some minor differences (within reason since they're hand-painted). I agree with @officialorange that Volks' promo pictures are not the best; the Dollfie Dreams I have look better in person.

 

Since I tend to buy all of my bjds blank (maybe sometime during a blue moon I might actually get a fullset), I'd say a majority have met my expectations in-person vs their promo (blank) photos. Only one clear exception to this stands out in my mind, and that was Simply Divine Thomas.

Mind, in general details Thomas was remarkably accurate to the promo photos. It was the scale of his facial features that were different from expectation. Presuming that they would be in-scale with the rest of my SD-70cm+, I was alarmed to discover that his features were actually larger and longer by proportion. It was off-putting to say the least, and took a bit of mental convincing to accept that I couldn't make him work for the purpose in which I got him.

Thomas is a beautiful sculpt, and if it had been under different circumstances where those details didn't matter (and I had a character to shell him as that worked), I would have kept him.

 

I've been pretty lucky so far, my Raccoon Doll girl looks exactly like the promo photos, as did my Withdoll boy. Gorgeous faceups on both. When I had an MYOU girl a while back I was pretty disappointed upon unboxing, her company face-up really didn't look like what was pictured at all, and I ended up selling her.

 

When it comes to blank dolls, I find them to be very accurate for the most part. I've only had a couple dolls that looked different because the photos for their heads had such dramatic lighting on them, but they still looked good (one of them ended up looking better actually). I almost always judge wether or not I want a doll based on how their blank faces and bodies look, especially since I usually do my own faceups. If a company doesn't show them blank, I will sometimes ask them if I can see pictures of them blank, and they're always very accommodating with that.

As far as fullsets go, I've only ever bought one, and it was for MYOU Wind. The quality was alright for the most part, but it definitely looked much frumpier irl than it did in the photos. That's my only experience, though, so I'm not sure about other companies. Of the company faceups I own, they also all look fairly accurate, but my Island Doll Honey's faceup definitely doesn't look as good as it does in the company photos. The eyelashes he came with were completely different from the company photo (company photo shows white wispy lashes, but I was given thick, black, blunt, eyelashes), so I had to replace them with my own white eyelashes once they fell off. The colors were also not as solid (were kinda patchy), it didn't have the same blushing around the eyes, and the colors weren't as vibrant. For the other company faceups I own, Fairyland is pretty accurate to the photos and so is Peak's Woods.

 

I tend to buy blank, but my Doll Chateau face ups have been spot on with all three of my girls; the more recent two in particular, I was really happy with. My Huajing are also a very good match to their pictures; if anything to me they look even better than the promo images My Charm Dolls are heavier and darker, I think, but I still like them. My Minifee Sirin had a much darker mouth, but the rest was fairly on point. The only dolls I have been really disappointed with were a pair I bought at the start of the hobby, a Doll Leaves girl and a Myou. They were both yosd, I forget the Doll Leaves sculpt, but the Myou was a Sylvia, and the Doll Leaves in particular was nothing like the promo pics. I sold them both. I have sometimes been surprised by blank dolls if I have been unable to find pictures of them without a face up. My Ringdoll Joy didn’t look at all like I imagined she would when she arrived!

 

Out of all the dolls I've owned over the years there were only two that looked different from the photos. Once was from Switch. At the time they only had artsy promo photos, but now their photos seem a lot clearer. I was still happy with what I received, but I didn't recognize it in 3d at first. The nose looked totally different from their photos. I think they used clever angles and lighting to soften its appearance because it was really prominent. For that reason I don't buy dolls where they only show the front view of the face unless I can find owner pictures. The other one was Flower & Junior... I think I may have gotten a defective one, it was incredibly rough and unfinished looking, it straight up looked like a junk cast. But I haven't seen other owners complaining about that, so that may have been a fluke. Most of the time I've gotten a doll that looks identical to or even better than the promo pics.

 

Full set outfits, and faceups that came with some of my dolls, look very close to the promo pictures. Some times the clothes quality doesn't live up to my expectations. The material might feel cheaper then I was expecting, or the clothing wasn't made as well as it appeared in the pictures.

The reason my photographs don't come out looking as great as the promo, it because of my not so great photography skills. The dolls look great in real life, but my pictures just don't reflect that most of the time.

 

I've only bought a couple of dolls with faceups, and both times, I was disappointed. The first was a DragonDoll Cheng, I thought he had a nice masculine face, yet also pretty, with natural colors and darker eyebrows. The one I got had a lot of pink and his eyebrows were angled so extremely it was almost comical. The sculpt also has a much, much flatter face than I expected. I ended up really not liking this doll at all and I think he was the first I ever sold. The other was a Ringdoll Shao, whose promo faceup was mostly neutral with greyish eye makeup and soft pink lips. The one I got was orange. With his red hair. It was so bad. He is the only fullset I've ever bought, and I put up with the faceup for a long time because I felt guilty wiping it, but end the end, I did, and liked him so much better. I've come to realize I'm just super picky about getting exactly what I want on faceups that it's best for me to do my own, or commission it if I can't manage my own.

 

For me it's been a 9/10 positive situation. Actually the only doll I have that was not 100% as pictured is Lillycat Ellana, in which the color was much more saturated IRL then in official pictures.