Have you ever imagined getting professional headshots without leaving home, dressing up, or searching for a photographer? I did, and decided to test several image generating services, hoping for some decent results.
The outcomes varied greatly. Frankly, most images bore little resemblance to me. Perhaps one in every hundred could deceive an unknowing audience, but generally, they all hovered in the uncanny valley of pseudo-identity. At first glance, they seem like me, but a longer look reveals a disconcerting divergence.
I observed that images with an illustrated style were more effective than those striving for photorealism. It seems the more an image tries to mimic reality, the more our instinctive mind resists.
I ended up using a couple of decent shots from each shoot for profile pictures across social networks.
