The interaction is primarily there to support users who supply poor quality photos. Given a photo taken with an actual lens (not a mobile phone's pin hole) the manual portion can be skipped. Plus, since we are only exposing single photo input (because given the opportunity to supply multiple photos, most users supply multiple garbage photos) certain profile features are difficult to recover. So we have a "3D detailing" interface so people can adjust their profile and add smile creases and so on. That 3D detailing interface also allows for exaggeration - which is how the avatar on our home page is presented.

Your work is very nice as well. Like yours, our video version requires no manual interaction. It's primarily used by government agencies, and we've not exposed it to the public yet.