How AI-generated nail design previews work in NailMe

One of NailMe's most-used tools lets you preview a nail design on a photo of your own hand before you ever sit down in a studio. Here's what's happening under the hood.

Starting from a real photo, not a generic model

Instead of showing a design on a stock hand, NailMe's mask editor works directly on a photo you provide. That immediately makes the preview more useful — you can judge how a shape or color actually looks against your own nail length and skin tone.

Shape overlays, placed by hand

The editor ships with a library of nail shape presets — oval, round, square, squoval, almond, stiletto, coffin — each rendered as a vector overlay. You tap a shape to drop it onto the canvas, then drag, resize and rotate it to line up with each nail. Every overlay you place is tracked independently, so you can mix shapes across fingers or remove one you don't like via filter chips without starting over.

On-device masking

Once shapes and any freehand brush strokes are placed, NailMe builds a mask from your paths and overlays — the region that should be replaced with the generated design. This masking step runs natively (Skia on iOS, PorterDuff compositing on Android), so the app can precisely carve out just the nail area, including rotation and transforms, before anything is sent off for generation.

From mask to generated design

The masked region and your chosen style are what actually drives the design generation step. Because the mask is already scoped tightly to the nail shapes you defined, the result stays anchored to your hand's real geometry instead of looking pasted on.

Why this matters for booking

A preview only helps if it changes what you book. In practice, it does two things: it gives you a concrete reference to share with your nail artist over in-app chat, and it lets studios see exactly what a customer wants before the appointment even starts — fewer surprises, faster bookings.

Curious about the rest of the app? See all 7 NailMe features, or read about the Kotlin Multiplatform architecture that this feature — and every other NailMe feature — is built on.