HeadshotPro is an online service that allows you to create high-quality photos of yourself without hiring a photographer. The style of images that the service specializes in, headshots, are recommended for use in professional settings. Using artificial intelligence, you can produce these images without the costs typically associated with professional headshot photography, all from the comfort of your computer.
In this HeadshotPro review, we get hands-on with the software. Is it as good as it looks, and is it right for you? We’ll be testing the user experience, the tools, and features (if any), and the resulting quality. Can AI produce realistic photos of you, or will everyone know your headshots are AI-generated? Let’s find out.
HeadshotPro review – is it worth it in 2024?
- Good selection of outfits and backdrops
- Clear guidelines for reference photos
- Generates multiple headshots at a time
- No need for an in-person photoshoot
- Perfect lighting every time
- Takes up to 2 hours to generate
- Requires 17 reference photos of yourself to begin with
- Most generated results weren’t usable
How does HeadshotPro work?
HeadshotPro is an online service that allows you to generate high-quality and professional headshots. These are photographs of yourself that can be used on your resume and online profiles to make your job applications stand out. In addition, they can used on company documents and business communication software after you’re hired. What all of these have in common is the need for professionalism. Presenting yourself well can be challenging, and not everyone is a good photographer. Additionally, hiring a photographer to take your professional headshots may not be an option for you.
This service utilizes AI (artificial intelligence) technology to produce new photos for you, based on a small selection of existing photos that you provide. After analyzing your face in these photos, HeadshotPro can create images ‘of you’ that are suitable for professional applications. For example, you might be wearing a new suit, in a spacious office, with perfect studio lighting and not a hair out of place.
Using HeadshotPro – my experience
HeadshotPro is one of many services that will digitally create photos featuring your face in new scenarios. In this case, the service offers professional corporate headshot photography with the power of AI. We used five different settings, consisting of an outfit and backdrop each, to test the AI over a reasonable range and diversity of output styles.
First impressions
My first impressions of the site are that of a polished and well-conceived service. There are generalized AI tools out there, but evidently, there’s a demand for a simple, niche, done-for-you service that caters to one of the most common types of photos that we’ll all need at some point in our professional lives. With easy site navigation and plenty of trust-building elements, there’s nothing unexpected about the user interface.
| Headshot style | Impressions |
|---|---|
| Cafe, black shirt | The shirt was tight-fitting a noticeable amount of the time. |
| Park, white t-shirt | The least realistic of the styles we tested. Also featured the worst likeness of any of these styles. |
| White backdrop, white shirt | The most variation of any of these styles, and not in a good way. Some usable examples. Several images were flattering, but I noticed some unconfident posing, and some in which I looked younger than I’d want to appear. |
| Blue backdrop, navy blazer | Strong across the board, with few faults. Several usable examples. I would have preferred a classic black suit, but was impressed at how it depicted me in a colour I don’t wear and wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. |
| Office, grey suit | Excellent likeness, and a nice confident suit. Several usable examples. My head was too large for my head in several images. |
Generating a headshot with HeadshotPro
When generating a headshot with this AI-powered software, you’ll find a good selection of styles and backgrounds. Picture yourself in front of a bookshelf, a red brick wall, or a window. Perhaps you’re in an office environment, or maybe a cafe would suit you better? Single-color backdrops are also available in white, grey, blue, or yellow.
You’ll also have control over the clothing you wear, remaining yourself in a denim jacket, black turtleneck, a grey suit, or a simple white shirt. There’s even an option for doctors which the service calls ‘a doctor coat’.
Having selected the 5 styles that it requires you to pick, you’re ready to upload your input data – reference photos of your own face. I chose Cafe in a black shirt, Park in a white t-shirt, White Backdrop in a white shirt, Blue Backdrop in a navy blazer, and Office in a grey suit.
The 2-hour waiting time feels excessive for a software-automated process that you’re paying for. Understandably, there are high costs in running a service of this type, but if it weren’t for the accuracy of the results, it would be easy to recommend an alternative that does a better job overall.
Profile picture generator
The profile picture generator is a separate tool available on the same website. With this tool, you can generate a non-photorealistic image of yourself in any of 5 different art styles, for free. Choose between flat illustration, 3D rendered, comic book, anime, and chibi cartoon to have a single image of your choice reimagined in that art style.
Personally, I’m happy with the result, and I look forward to using it in my thirties when my visible age matches that of the generated image. In all seriousness, the accuracy of the glass and jacket in my flat illustration is impressive.
User Experience
I found HeadshotPro to be clear and upfront about what it takes to achieve a high-quality result. You might recognize the requirements and recommendations as the same ones that make a good ID photo of any kind. Your input photos don’t need to be professional, but they do at least need to be of yourself, and nothing else. Photos you submit should be clear, uncluttered close-ups with good enough lighting to make your face easily visible. The clarity of instruction at this stage is a good sign.
The service will also ask you for some personal details such as age and eye color. Such details may not be equally visible in all photos you submit, and we found this to help produce a more accurate result even in those cases.
These photos can be dragged and dropped, which we found to work fine. Unfortunately, there was API error when attempting to use the Google Drive upload integration which completely reset the upload process.
Other than this error, we found the most troublesome aspect of the user experience to be the requirement to upload 17 photographs of yourself. Unless you have 17 photos of yourself that you’re happy with, this means taking new ones – most likely selfies. While there’s no way around uploading photos of yourself, we think the quantity thereof could be reduced, to reduce the time it takes to use the service.
Pricing
Individual pricing for this service comes with three options:
- Small shoot ($29/use)
- Normal shoot ($39/use)
- Premium shoot ($49/use)
A small shoot affords you 40 headshots in total, with 1 background, 1 clothing style, and a 2-hour turnaround time. With a normal shoot, you’ll receive 120 headshots in total, across 3 backgrounds and clothing styles, but still with a 2-hour turnaround time. The most premium option will generate 200 headshots across 5 backgrounds and clothing styles, with the same 2-hour turnaround time as the more affordable options.
Teams looking for pricing discounts at scale might want to look into the team pricing options.
Final thoughts – is HeadshotPro worth it?
After using the tool, I’d say that it’s worth it for any professional looking to make their job applications or online presence more presentable. If you don’t have any high-quality headshots already, this is a relatively low-cost way to potentially present yourself in a more impressive way than other candidates. It’s not without flaws, however, and you should not expect every generated image to be usable. As with any AI-generated image service, it’s hit-and-miss, but the more headshots you opt for, the better chance you’ll have of finding one to use across resumes, online profiles, and more.
There is still an uncanny valley feel to some results, exacerbated by the fact that you know your own face better than anyone else. Additionally, I found the AI to struggle with glasses, occasionally generating partial frames with no lenses. However, the overall quality is excellent, and of 120 AI-generated headshots, I liked around 40 of them. My selected photos had no issues with crossed eyes, awkward hand placements, or ill-fitting clothing. In fact, this was not a common problem among any of the generated results. The sharpness and clarity of results are higher than any other service I’ve tried, and the lighting is perfect every single time. Ultimately, I believe many of my AI headshots to be usable in a professional setting and would recommend the service overall.
