Virtual headshots are taking the professional headshot world by storm. They’re an up-and-coming new technology with many benefits you’ll want to experience. If you’re new to virtual headshots, read on for an ultimate guide on how going virtual with your next professional headshots can benefit you.
What Is a Virtual Headshot?
You probably know what a headshot is, but we’ll refresh your memory just in case. A headshot is a professional photo of you that you can use in business settings. It generally features your upper body and head. More traditional headshots feature neutral backgrounds and dark business attire. However, more modern-day headshots are inviting more color and personality into the photos.
Now, take what you know about traditional headshots, add an AI element, and you’ll have virtual headshots. Essentially, a virtual headshot is a professional headshot created by an AI headshot generator. The tool uses artificial intelligence that’s trained and fine-tuned to produce quality headshots ready for any professional occasion. Creating virtual headshots takes minimum effort and time on your part.
Instead of sitting in a session with a professional photographer, you follow simple instructions and let artificial intelligence produce business-ready photos. These headshots are based on photos you upload for the platform to work with. You’ll also provide written instructions to help the generator better understand your vision for your headshots.
There are many different AI headshot generators, and using a high-quality one like Portrait Pal is crucial for guaranteeing realistic, flattering, and professional headshots. In a matter of hours, your headshot order will be ready to download and distribute.
What You Need to Know About Virtual Headshots
Virtual headshots are a great resource in this fast-paced world. Setting up and taking professional photos requires more time than a lot of us want to spare. For many time-crunched entrepreneurs, AI headshots can save the day!
Getting the best results with your headshots and making a lasting impression of professionalism on potential clients and employers takes minimal work on your part. Here’s what you need to know:
How to Create a Virtual Headshot
Our platform is super user-friendly. You can create virtual headshots in three easy steps. Then the headshot generator takes over, and you can do whatever you want while you wait for your results. Here’s how it works.
1. Upload Several Photos
First, you’ll need to upload several photos of yourself for the AI generator to work with. Ideally, these photos will be close-ups from the shoulders up, just like you would have in a headshot. They can be candid photos, selfies, or portraits.
You can make most photos work as long as you have good lighting and a clean backdrop. You can even snap a few quick selfies to upload if you don’t want to scroll through your camera roll to find these photos.
The AI generator will use these photos to help create virtual headshots that are true to your likeness and capture your features well. The clearer photos you can upload, the better chance your virtual headshots will be a realistic representation of who you are.
2. Create a Photo Style Vision
Take time to think about the vision you have for your headshots. Think about the vibe you’re going for and if it needs to be strictly business professional or if you can have a more business-casual feel. Depending on your vocation, a casual look may be the order of the day.
Also, consider background options. Many people choose classics such as traditional neutral colors, black or white, a muted-colored dark background. Others choose a new-age outdoor background with bright foliage or the brick wall of a building. Some go for a more edgy surround, like a graffiti wall or vivid stripes. Your background should speak to what you do and how you want it to represent yourself, so only go with an edgy look if your clients and/or employer will appreciate it.
Think about what clothing styles you want to wear, how you want your hair styled, and what you want your makeup to look like, if applicable. Consider any accessories you may need or want in the headshots, but remember not to go overboard on accessorizing since you don’t want to distract from yourself as the main focal point.
As you consider your photo style vision, follow the guidelines for a professional headshot, not a plain old portrait. You should understand and follow the differences between portraits and headshots to get accurate professional headshots. You want to let the professional side of your personality shine through the most in these photos, so steer clear of the typical selfie or smartphone photo of yourself.
3. Write a Prompt
With your photo style vision in mind, you’ll be asked to write a prompt for the AI generator so it can bring your vision to life. This step lets you share your background, outfit, accessory, and hairstyle ideas.
Creating your photo style vision before this step helps you convey the most straightforward ideas of what you want from the AI program so you get the results you want. You might research several photos that you like beforehand to give you ideas. Study what they have in common so you can express that in writing to the generator.
Once you have your ideas in place, you can put them into writing. For example, you might tell the generator, “Please create a headshot of me. I would like it show from my elbows to above my head. The background should be plain white. I should be smiling in a pleasant, friendly way with my teeth showing. My hair should be curled and framing my face. My makeup should be conservative with neutral tones and barely noticeable.”
This is a simplistic sample of what you can write in your prompt. You can add as much detail as you like–the more the better!
The AI generator will use this prompt and the information it gains from the photos you upload to create realistic, professional headshots with your features and likeness.
Bonus: Let the AI Generator Do the Rest
Finally, once you’ve uploaded photos and written a prompt, there’s nothing else required from you. The AI generator will take anywhere from two to three hours to process and create your virtual headshots.
That’s several hours you can use to accomplish any other desired tasks or hobbies on your to-do list. You can get a few chapters into that book you’ve been meaning to read. You can have some quality time with your family, tackle that mountain of laundry, respond to some work emails, and eat a snack or two.
Before you know it, your AI-derived headshots will be in your inbox and ready to download. Our generator will save them in our system as long as you have an active account, so you can refer back to them whenever you need to.
How Will a Virtual Headshot Benefit Me?
There are many benefits to creating your headshots virtually. While it’s likely you’ll discover even more benefits to using this new technology as you go, we wanted to point out at least five top benefits that you won’t want to miss.
Cost Effective
For many people, the number one reason to use AI headshots is for the cost savings. The average cost of professional headshots taken and edited by a photographer is in the neighborhood of $200-$600, just for a few photographs you can distribute in the professional realm. In a couple of years, you’ll need new ones. If you’re lucky, your company will pay for it, but very few companies do, and most people have to front the costs themselves.
Virtual headshots are extremely cost-effective and can save you hundreds of dollars. We offer three packaging options all well under $100. Here’s what we offer with our pricing packages:
- Our Starter package costs $35, making it an excellent option for economy shoppers. You get 20 photos delivered in 3 hours, so you should have at least a couple of headshots you’ll love out of that package.
- Our Basis package is our most popular at the affordable cost of $45. You get 60 professional headshots out of this one that will be delivered to you in just 2.5 hours. With that many photos, you’re guaranteed to find several headshots you can use over and over again.
- Our Premium package is ideal for those who want more variety in their headshot options. It features 100 high-quality headshots and takes just 2 hours to process. You should be set for quite a while with that many headshots to choose from. You can use your photos for branding, across social media channels, and on your company website. It’s great to have various photos to share in your online image without sacrificing quality or consistency.
If you’re worried about paying any money at all for a headshot that you may or may not like, you can try out our platform for free. Using our complimentary AI headshot tool, you can generate one free photo of yourself to use as you please.
No Need for a Professional Photographer
As mentioned above, using an AI headshot generator can save you hundreds of dollars because don’t need a professional photographer at any point.
As we mentioned previously, it’s far more cost-effective to use virtual headshots over those taken by a professional. A headshot session with an experienced photographer can range from $150 to $600 or more. The cost will depend on whether you do a basic, mid-range, or high-end photo session. It also will vary depending on how long your session takes.
That’s another reason to skip the professional photographer: time. A single session can take one to three hours, sometimes more depending on the location of your photo session, which backgrounds you want to use, if you do any outfit changes, or if you need to touch-up any hair or applicable makeup. That doesn’t count the driving or waiting time.
In addition to the time spent taking the photos, you also have to account for editing time. This could take days, weeks, or months, depending on the workload of the photographer you use.
With virtual headshots, you don’t need to worry about fitting all this additional time into your schedule. Within just a few hours, you’ll have access to your professional headshots, and most of those hours will be the AI generator doing the work while you accomplish other things.
Don’t Need to Find the Perfect Outfit
Something stressful about getting your professional headshots done is finding the perfect outfit to showcase your professionalism while still letting your personality shine through. You want to find the right colors for your outfit and ensure it isn’t distracting in any way. Avoiding large and busy prints is a must, as well as avoiding too casual of a vibe. The pressure to find the perfect outfit can be overwhelming. It can also be costly if you can’t find anything you love in your closet.
Since the AI generator will pick your outfits for you, there’s really no need to stress about finding the perfect outfit for virtual headshots. You can give a general idea of what you’re hoping for in the prompt you write and then sit back and let the AI generator curate a professional look for you. This is a huge benefit of virtual headshots that helps save you time and money in the long run.
Flexible Options
For the indecisive professional, virtual headshots are ideal. You might by unsure about using traditional black or white backgrounds or branching out to some of the newer headshot background trends. Virtual headshots offer the possibility of flexible options without costing you more time and money to try out the backgrounds you’re interested in. Simply mention in the written prompt what backgrounds you’re hoping for, and see what the AI generator comes up with.
The same flexibility is true for hairstyles and outfits, as well as makeup if you’re a makeup person. With all this flexibility in mind, remember to be true to yourself and how you would look daily at work, in a meeting, or in an important interview. Don’t let the virtual aspect allow you to be so flexibly creative that you stray too far from how you realistically look in your professional work environment.
Staying true to how you look and keeping up with industry standards in your headshots is especially important for careers such as lawyers, where your headshot is often the first introduction a potential client has to you and what you have to offer them. You want to be true to your appearance so no one feels deceived after seeing your headshot and meeting you in person. It will be easy to stay true to yourself if you create your photo-style vision before writing the prompt for the AI headshot generator to follow.
Don’t Have to Leave Your Home
Who wants to make an extra trip they don’t have to? There’s no need to take time to drive to and from a photo shoot or even to and from the store to get a professional headshot outfit. You can comfortably create your virtual headshots in your home. You don’t even have to leave the couch if you don’t want to.
Not having to get out to meet with a photographer and spend a few hours in a photo session is a great time saver in our fast-paced world. This may be one of the best benefits because it makes virtual headshots so convenient.
Receive Multiple High-Quality Headshots
When getting headshots done by a professional headshot photographer, you’ll end up with maybe 3 to 5 edited and ready-to-use headshots once they return them to you. Depending on your session length, you could get around 20 to 30 headshots, but you’ll likely pay more for them to account for the time the photographer spent editing them.
As mentioned above, when you choose one of our price packages, you’ll receive 20, 60, or 100 high-quality completed headshots. This amount of photos will be at no additional cost to you, and it won’t require you to wait longer to receive the headshots because of editing time. Having so many headshots available to use means you can find the right headshot for each occasion, whether that’s updating your website, submitting a resume, or updating your social media profiles.
Is It Ethical to Use Virtual Headshots?
Since they’re created using artificial intelligence technology, some question the ethicality of using virtual headshots. If you write a prompt in which the AI generator creates headshots that look nothing like you, that wouldn’t be ethical. But no one here is trying to lie to potential employers or clients. If you upload multiple clear photos of yourself and write a prompt with a clear and concise photo style vision, you should receive realistic headshots that capture your genuine features and likeness.
If you’re not sure some of the results are true to who you are, use one of the many others out of the 20 to 100 created that genuinely represent you as a professional. Choosing a high-quality platform to help create your virtual headshots will help ensure you can ethically use them.
If this ultimate guide leaves you wanting to go virtual with your next headshots, we recommend you give our high-quality AI headshot generator a try.