Quote - I've been experimenting with FaceShop4 (standalone with Poser) for a good few days now. I've tried a number of different approaches with reference photos but have really been somewhat disappointed with the results thus far.
This experience is best typified with the approach suggested by santinocorleone, where the reference photo is manipulated to be exactly symmetrical . I took a straight on headshot photo into an image editor where I positioned a carefully planned out set of tiny points on one side of the face, then mirrored it to give a perfectly symmetrical image. The image was perfectly square and the center line exactly in the middle. I imported the resulting Jpeg and my cosen head obj into FaceShop and (very meticulously - I took a great deal of time over this) positioned the first set of dots.
Now...this is where I realised there were going to be problems, because although my reference image was a very good guide for dot placement in the reference display, the head obj display has no such guides. I don't know if you can display a mapped head (with the relevant dot locations). Anyway, although the head obj starts off directly face on in the display, even with very very careful placement  (trying for the same symmetrical placement as in the reference) after the first set of dots were placed FaceShop still rotated the obj head prior to the next  stage. So this makes further accurate placement of dots and curves very difficult.
Ok, so I went on to complete all the dot and curve guides (including placing curves on a profile shot), and the resulting morph was predictably asymmetrical (by miles). I'm kind of assuming that the mirror function doesn't actually mirror the morph in FaceShop, at least it hasn't done so on any of mine so far. It's very frustrating because one side of the morph actually looks frighteningly accurate (it's a self portrait BTW).

I so wish there was a way to 1. display a map on the head obj in Faceshop, 2. Fix the display angles to orthographic projections of the head obj in FaceShop so I can accurately place the dots to achieve symmetry.

If I've missed a Faceshop feature that enables me to do these things I apologise and will experiment further, but for now I think FaceShop lacks a certain functionality to construct the quality of morphs I'm looking for. It's full of potential, but needs further development before it becomes truly useful for me.  

OK, it seems that you have a hard time aligning the photo and the 3D mesh (that's what dots do). There are little tricks here (see the enclosed video via the video/arrow button).
One trick is this: if you don't see an ear, try to guess its location.
If you have a straight head-on shot, just bypass the whole dot system, the default is also straigh on.
For version FS 4.5 we do plan a manual way to rotate heads in order to align to photos (similar to how it is now working with the profile image). For now, I agree that this is a weak point.
As far as saving .FAC files - I never do those. I usually just save heads as OBJ.
I hope this helps.
BTW: don't just give up - there are thousands of users who learned and using FS.
One more thing: using it as a DAZ plugin (and without turning on Classic 3.5) many people get instant good results (this is the method where you pick 3 points and let the computer do the rest:-).

Laslo