Take a deep breath. This is not a disaster.
Better pics will yield better opportunities with better women, but it is not going to translate to success. Success will come in learning how to handle yourself as these opportunities come.
That is what you're working on now. The Italian girl didn't work. You learned what not to do. Next time you're going to do it just a little differently. Next time might bring better results, or, you might make some new mistakes. But you'll learn from that too.
Each time you're going to fine tune the process, and eventually, you will start getting it right. Then you will start getting it right more than wrong. Eventually you'll do it right most of the time and it will become easy. Effortless.
It will be at that point that you will no longer have confidence that you have the goods to do it, but a confidence in having done it well so many times.
That confidence is crucial for the next step: the date itself. You must have it to influence things to your advantage during the dates. It will play a big role in molding the date itself.
But for now, you have to keep working on the first step: opening, getting the number and setting the date with women you want to meet.
Everything else will come. But that is first.
And you're doing fine. This failure is not holding you back. It is propelling you forward.
In the meantime, work on better pics.