Q:

can makehuman/MB-Labs be used to make a SPECIFIC human face from photos?

I've been trying to use either of these two tools to create a model, in this case, based on the actor Pete Postlethwaite. Now, I'm not a very good artist, which is why I was trying to use these tools to generate this model, and a whole slew of others I need.
I cannot seem to get the model in either tool to look anything like the source. Naturally I'm going to blame my tools first instead of the craftsman, so I'm wondering if it is "possible" for a skilled artist to actually make the generated models look close to what they are supposed to look like, or are the tools only for generating "generic" characters?
Bonus points for being able to provide a link to some sort of information on how to do what I am trying to do. (Yes, I've read the manual for MB-Lab and have been screwing around with makehuman for over a year watching various tutorials and what-nots)

A:

Tools like this are best viewed as a starting point, they are generally designed to provide a broad range of human shape variations rather than specific ones. Every human is slightly different and it is infeasible to provide parametric controls sufficient to capture all this variation. 
The idea should be to start with major proportions and work down to finer details, getting as close as you can in the tool and then switch to sculpt/manual modelling etc to refine. Textures also make a big difference, and neither makehuman or mb-lab provide much here, you may want to look at projection painting from photos if you can find some that are good enough. 

