The worst part is, surgery like this is not only painful and has a grueling recovery, but it's also not reversible and can completely alter the way your face appears, making you look like, well - not you!

We're lucky in this day and age though, because there are some excellent non surgical options that leave our bone structure and underlying facial tissues alone, leaving us looking like ourselves, just a younger version with tighter, more vibrant and youthful skin. One such family of facial skin care treatments that can be performed in a professional facility, that gives beautiful results, are laser treatments.

The only problem is that they've evolved so much that many women and men get confused when looking for the type of laser procedures that will work best for their individual situation and skin care goals.

For example, do you have acne scarring, or is hyper pigmentation more your concern? Are you looking for something to help smooth those crow's feet and fine lines, or are you looking for something that will take away years of sun damage and restore the smooth texture of your skin?

Everyone has different skin care goals, and there are different types of laser treatments, none of them cheap unfortunately, but most of them very effective at targeting certain issues successfully, and many times with minimal downtime and risk.

So, let's take a look at two of the most cutting edge and popular laser skincare treatments today, and talk about what they can do for your skin.

1.)Fraxel laser : This method is also called the fractional method, because the laser works on the skin to remove imperfections and sun damage, and restore a youthful even tone and brilliance, fraction by fraction of the skin. This means because it works on such small areas at a time, it is able to "fine tune" each individual area, and perfect it before it moves onto the next targeted area.

This also is supposed to mean a very short recovery time and very little pain, however, I must caution that I've read discussion boards where women and men refute the claims that it is virtually pain free and say they did indeed experience discomfort during the process. The cost of the fraxel laser method is pretty high, with a package of six treatments usually running a couple thousands dollars, depending on where you go to get them done.

2.)Titan laser skin improvement system : This one is very interesting indeed and is exciting because it uses a method that not only helps improve the skin's surface dramatically, but it is also used to help regenerate collagen, and can even be used to soften and "fill in" nasal labial folds (the area on either side of the mouth, that runs from the edges of the nose to the mouth, these folds often get more pronounced with age).

The Titan laser is one of the deepest penetrating lasers, and that is how it claims it can help stimulate dramatic increases in collagen production and help to fill out lines and folds in the skin and make the face look "plump" again as it did when you were younger. We do tend to lose facial fat as we age, which accounts for much of the aged look of the face, since the cheeks get more sunken, and this leads to an increased appearance of wrinkles as well.

The Titan is supposed to also help with acne scarring, and may be an especially good choice for acne scarring because of it's "skin filling" abilities due to the increased collagen production, which would be ideal for filling in pitted acne scars and ice pick-type scars form acne lesions.