Do you suffer from pigmentation or past acne scarring? Well if you do this is the most perfect product for you! I have learnt quite a lot about pigmentation purely through being quite interested in it and how it occurs.

***What is pigmentation?***

Before I explain what this product does I think the word pigmentation needs to be clarified. Pigmentation can range from lots of freckles to age spots or dark spots. Freckles are inherited and are sometimes brought out by the sun, they are a form of pigmentation but they are not primarily what this product is trying to eliminate. Half the people with freckles quite like their freckles and freckles can come and go. I have a patch of freckles which only come out in the summer around my nose which I don't mind. But dark/ age spots are slightly different they are more like patches of darkness which can occur all over the body but the face is obviously where people want to get rid of them because they are most prominent. Dark spots can be inherited but most peoples are caused by UVA and UVB rays from the sun... so it is mainly from excess sunbathing without wearing any sun protection/SPF. These patches can also be triggered by stress too.

***How does the sun cause dark patches?***

Basically dark patches are the skins way of defending itself against the sun or stress. Meloncytes are a group of cells which produce melanin (the pigmentation) causing the darkness. The darker the patch or spot the longer it has been there and the harder it is to get rid of. However most people with age spots tend to have the notion that they cannot get rid of it... however you can! This is where Clinique's product comes in. First of all you can get prescribed medication and lotions to help this but Clinique's product is without prescription and uses a leading prescription ingredient.

Clinique has had two versions of this product and the second or newest version which you can only get now is called Even Better Clinical Dark Spot Corrector. It is a serum which uses gentle exfoliation and a prescription ingredient to help break down the melanin and lighten the melanin so it is less visible.

***Why I bought this product***

I do not suffer from pigmentation but I do suffer from minor acne scarring. I had seen the Even Better serum over a year ago but I thought it was quite pricey at £30.00 for 30ml so I never bought it. But one day I was browsing around the Clinique counter and the lady asked me if I wanted a consultation so I had nothing better to do so I sat down and she asked me if I had any main concerns with my skin. I said to her that I have now combated my acne but I still have marks left from it which are annoying because there are days when I would love to wear no makeup but this stops me from doing so. She suddenly grabbed this product and was so enthusiastic about it. She said it was the second version of the Even Better Serum that hadn't been out long. She explained the benefits to me and told me why it was so much better than the previous version (due to a specific new ingredient). She let me feel it and it felt extremely silky and it was for all skin types even oily skins. I asked her the price and she said £37.50 for a 30ml. At that point I thought oh dear I hope she doesn't think I am going to buy that because it is a fortune! But I think she saw the look on my face, she then brought out a chart of different colours of darkness (like a paint chart) but for pigmentation. She put the chart against my darkest acne scarring and said something along the lines of "if you were to buy this product today we would expect to see it to be two shades lighter within 4 weeks" and she pointed to the chart to where she expected it to be. She also said that within 6-8 weeks that it should have evened out my skin tone by 53%. Which I was quite impressed with. She showed me some photos of some success stories they had found during the research of the product and I was thoroughly impressed. But I thought I needed to be honest with her. I told her that if I had to use this product for 6-8 weeks that I couldn't afford the number of bottles of it at the price it was. But she assured me that a little went a long way and that the product only needed to be put on the specific area of acne scarring/ pigmentation which for me is on my chin. It was to be put on morning and evening after my moisturiser. So I weighed it up and thought ok as long as it does what she is telling me and she thought that two bottles of it would decrease it by 50% I thought I need to give it a go. So with gritted teeth I held over my debit card at the counter for it. Arrhh I thought I had made a really horrible mistake and wasted a lot of money.

***Verdict***

After 4 weeks of using it, I can see a difference. My skin does look more even, it feels better and less bumpy. I can also see that the redness has been reduced and the acne scarring has been slightly reduced. Plus best of all I still haven't run out of the serum, I cannot see into the bottle but I think from the feel of the weight of it that there is about a quarter of it left. But if I have seen a difference with this product and mine is quite minor scarring then somebody with dark patches of pigmentation would see a dramatic difference. I recommended it to my mum who has started to see a couple of very light patches on her forehead and she is now using it to try to prevent the pigmentation becoming darker and she loves the feel of it.

Even if you don't suffer from pigmentation it is definitely a product to keep in mind if ever you did. I think the thing to remember with all these serums or 'wonder creams' which my grandma calls them... that the advertised dramatic results like the anti wrinkle creams do not diminish the problem over night... give it time and let the product have time to work. I have also read recently on the internet that there is also other products by Clinique in the same range to eliminate pigmentation, these include:

* Even better skin tone correcting moisturiser SPF20 £32.00
* Even better foundation SPF 15 £20.00

Another thing that must be remembered is that if you do use this product to eliminate any pigmentation that you should also wear an SPF daily to protect your skin against further damage.

I would definitely recommend this product! 5 out of 5 stars from me! However it is quite pricey and I think they would probably sell a lot more if the price wasn't quite so high perhaps £25.00 would have been more reasonable!