First impressions matter — and often that starts with your profile picture.
Our newly developed brand strategy for Cabal suggest the use of clean photography, with light, clear backgrounds.... but all of our photos are of us on holidays, with other people or wearing sunglasses - not to brief! We tried to do some semi-professional profile pics ourselves and they weren't crash hot.
So in a fit of frustration I turned to AI, as you do these days. After 15mins googling the best AI headshot generators, I settled on Aragon. an AI-powered headshot generator, to see if it could help us create polished, professional headshots quickly and affordably.
Here’s how it went.
Summary
Well, we're using the AI headshots on our website, and TBH they look sharp, so mission accomplished. BUT I'm a bit embarassed by them because they're too polished. So deducting a star.
This is Me.
Yes it's definitely me... just a bit be
First Impressions.
Yes it's definitely me... just a bit better.
When I showed friends the reactions included 'they're very aspirational', 'you look fit', 'a few years ago maybe', and 'haha never seen you in a suit'.
So I think consensus is that it creates realistic, but overly polished images. I guess if I went to a photography studio, and had some make-up and hair, or perhaps if my professional pics had some photoshop work, then they'd look similar. But they're quite different to the selfies and photos of myself that I'm used to seeing.
What I Loved
It's Just So Easy: Taking high quality images is tough and lots can go wrong... awkward smiles, un-ironed shirt, where to put your hands, bags under eyes etc. But AI takes all of this out of the equation... it takes the best parts of all your photos to compile and very appealing composite, with great outfits, nice smiles and good poses. It's incredibly easy to create super pro looking shots.
It's Cheap: I paid £38 for the mid-range pack, with two choices of background and two choices of outfit, and 40 photos as a result (which they upped to 100 for no reason).
Lots of Choices: The images rival any studio-quality results - in fact I'd say they're superior. AI put me in about 10 different outfits (suits, jeans, turtlenecks!) - which I would never have achieved with a professional photographer.
Give me back my blemishes
The photos are just a bit TOO polished and I definitely fee awkward putting them out into the world - hence our disclosure that they're AI and this article!
Aragon AI offer a blemish remover, but I live chatted with their support and asked if they had a blemish adder or make-up remover - but they don't have this feature yet.
I'm Australian and have some clear sunspots on my cheeks and next to my eyes - but the AI images all have these airbrushed out... which makes them not 'photorealistic'. I think if this is mastered and the photos CAN be realistic (even with that spot or chapped lip), then the result would be far more realistic, valuable and usable in a professional context.
My body
I came to Aragon for the face but would stay for the body. All the pictures have me with a solid frame, good rack of shoulders and looking just generally far more buff than I am. You can choose body-type and I chose 'Regular' (as opposed to 'Slim' or 'Athletic'). But again, the images are a little too perfect / enhanced.
Feedback
Feel free to be brutal and give any opinions as to whether you think the AI images are 'usable' in a professional context or not.
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