Five tools that turn a phone selfie into a professional headshot, with the exact prompt, exact prices, and a workflow you can run before lunch.
A photographer charges around $300 and books you two weeks out. This playbook gets you a LinkedIn-ready headshot today, for somewhere between $0 and $35. By the end you'll have:
Every AI headshot tool is garbage-in, garbage-out. Before you touch any of them, take 8 to 15 fresh selfies. Here are the rules:
Face a window. Soft, even daylight on your face. No overhead lights, no harsh sun.
Vary the angle slightly. Straight on, slight left, slight right. Chest up in frame.
No sunglasses, no hats, no filters. The model needs your real face to keep your real face.
Plain backgrounds win. A blank wall beats a cluttered room. The tool has less to fight.
Start here because it costs nothing and takes two minutes. Go to gemini.google.com, upload your best single selfie, and paste this prompt:
Turn this photo into a professional studio headshot. 85mm lens look, soft diffused lighting, neutral gray backdrop, navy blazer over a white shirt. Keep my exact face, skin tone, and hair. Do not change my facial features.
The free tier handles image-to-image generation. If the first result looks off, regenerate or tweak one variable at a time: swap "navy blazer" for your actual wardrobe, or "gray backdrop" for "warm off-white backdrop."
If the Gemini result is good enough, you're done and you paid nothing. If you want a full set of options, keep going.
This is the one I actually paid for. Upload a handful of selfies, pick your styles, and BetterPic sends back around 20 studio-quality headshots in under an hour for $35.
The workflow: create an account at betterpic.io, upload the selfies from Step 1, choose 2 or 3 outfit and backdrop combos, and go do something else. When the set lands, shortlist your top three and check them against the quality test in Step 6.
Use BetterPic when you want volume and consistency: one headshot for LinkedIn, one for your website, one for speaker decks, all matching.
Aragon (aragon.ai) is for people who know exactly what they want. You pick the outfit, the backdrop, and even the lighting setup before it generates. The full set comes back in about 45 minutes.
Pick Aragon over BetterPic if you're matching an existing brand look, like your team's headshots all on the same backdrop, or your personal brand runs on a specific color palette. Dial in the settings once, and every shot in the set obeys them.
Don't believe AI headshots can pass for real? HeadshotPro (headshotpro.com) hands you one full-quality finished shot before you spend a dime. Not a watermarked blur. A real deliverable.
Upload your selfies, wait for the sample, and judge it with your own eyes. If it holds up, pay for the full set. If it doesn't, you walk away having spent nothing. This is the lowest-risk entry point of the five.
Rounding out the five: Generation Headshots. Eight bucks, 30 photos. That's the whole invoice. If budget is the constraint, start here instead of Step 3. And if you just want fast and fine, the Remini phone app enhances a selfie in about ten seconds as a bonus sixth option.
Whichever tool you use, run your favorite shot through this 5-point check before it goes anywhere public:
Pass all five and ship it. Update LinkedIn, your email avatar, your site bio, and your speaker one-sheet in the same sitting so everything matches.
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