Show HN: Professional headshots for remote team with AI

[keizo]

I follow you and Pieter Levels on twitter. Some wild things you guys create -- the control net things are unreal. I am continually impressed and inspired.

If you're looking for critiques or improvements stating "Indistinguishable from real photos" seems a stretch as good as they are. Even if I were to use ai photos, I'd never try to pass them off as real. Seems dishonest. I'd push more towards a new thing, not sell as replacement for proper headshots. In that way, I'd think stylized things would do better, ie make it a piece of art. But also I'm def not target customer and you already seem to be doing quite well. Good on you for building so much.

[not-chatgpt]

To generate realistic looking headshots, you need high quality training data (i.e. high quality headshots) of the person. Then what's stopping them from using stable diffusion and stylize those existing photos in the first place?

[t344344]

> I'd never try to pass them off as real. Seems dishonest

With photo-shopping, makeup, plastic surgery... AI generated photos are ethical.

[kordlessagain]

At FeatureBase, we did a form with a few prompts building entries for everyone to fill out, which we then sent to Dalle2: https://www.featurebase.com/about

More than a few of us didn't want our images on the Internet, so this was a good compromise.

[ashtonmeuser]

It’s hilarious to me that the most absurd, standoutish picture is Jason, the only human team member.

[newfie_bullet]

This is a great idea. Matt Jaffee wins it for me - coffee sloth!

[M4tze]

Made me smile. Team Jacob

[shubhamjain]

Although impressive, many of the photos shown can't be passed off as authentic headshots. Many of the photos linked in the landing page itself have issues. Example [1].

But even if I ignore them most of them, there is something off. Maybe I am biased because I know it's AI-generated, but I also feel they look too polished for the real world. The facial skin isn't generally this perfect. And the bokeh looks like it has been artificially added.

I won't say I can point out 100% of the time when a photo has been AI generated. But if I saw a series of them generated with the same software, I don't think it will be too hard.

[1]: https://bit.ly/4033epk

[Gigachad]

They all have skin that’s too perfect. The images are high resolution and hyper detail but then the skin looks like it was airbrushed on

[forgotusername6]

The hands are a dead giveaway that it is AI as opposed to being simply photoshopped.

[KineticLensman]

hands and fingers are frequently off in the landing page shots, although the example you've highlighted is particularly bad. I found a couple where the fingers are correctly formed but the proportions are wrong, e.g. [0]

[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmSSw-maAAAaZ0g.jpg

[holub008]

Does this dilute the headshot currency in the professional marketplace? If anyone can generate a flawless, idealized photo of themself, surely it reduces the signal headshots once provided: that you have the means to pay a photographer & are willing to invest the time / give a damn about appearing professional.

It might also damage the sense of identity they provide, if the generated images wander too far from reality of the source images.

[dewey]

Most companies strongly discourage you from submitting headshots already. At this point, it's considered unprofessional to submit a picture on an application.

[Aeolun]

Or you can just take decent pictures? Is this really something we need?

I dunno, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth somehow. Like we’re replacing the things that should be uniquely human with something fake.

[junon]

Pay for 1k+ international plane rides or coordinate a small army of remote photographers all to have the same style somehow, paying all of them at the same time, perhaps contributing quite a lot to the climate change problem in the process just for some photos.

Or shell out 30 bucks pro-mensch to get a consistent headshot of all employees using whatever Tinder/Grindr/insta photos they have laying around.

I don't own a large company but I know which option I'd pick if I needed to do this.

[r_hoods_ghost]

I live with an actor. Every year or so she gets a set of professional headshots done which costs somewhere between £300 and £1000 depending on the photographer. While the quality of a professional set is undoubtedly better than these (currently) they're not so far off and I can see an acting student or jobbing actor going for a service like this if they're skint.

[dsco]

Great. You spend 10 minutes trying to take a decent headshot and get back to us with how fun it was.

I’m not saying the product will be the next Facebook, but boy does it solve a very niche and annoying problem.

[Kiro]

Why should this of all things be uniquely human?

[entropyie]

I really expected to see some "before" shots to understand the value of the solution. For all I know, the input photos were already great...

[JCharante]

I'm in the progress of trying it out and they recommend uploading pictures taken with a "professional" camera (and they're very adamant that if you upload bad quality pictures then they won't refund you).

[junon]

They're there, just above them. Super tiny, so it's understandable they were missed.

[dannypostma]

Time to make the little before images more clear. Cheers!

[adammarples]

They're the little images above the big images

[atlantic]

Great idea, and it may really work. The price point looks right for corporate clients, although a lower price point for a small number of photos for private individuals would be nice. Nobody cares if the photo looks a bit retouched. It'll look great on the team webpage or on LinkedIn.

Can I make a suggestion? A similar service is needed for dating purposes. Most people on dating websites have awful photos, the kind you take in front of the bathroom mirror. You'd probably need to offer three pictures: one a headshot, another full-body, and a third in a social setting (party, sports, whatever).

Offering this service, you might even be able to partner up with major dating sites.

[TheObviousOne]

Do you think those ones are valid: https://www.metuktakim.co.il/dating.png ?

It's on different(more localized service in Israel) Called: https://www.metuktakim.co.il/

Which is well-dressed in Hebrew :)

[dannypostma]

Alright, this has been requested so many times I think it’s time for me to build it.

[chaychoong]

Looks oddly similar to https://headshotai.studio/, some of their FAQ answers are exactly the same too. Not sure if they are owned by the same person, or if one of them copied the other.

[dannypostma]

Yeah they copied my other product, https://www.profilepicture.ai.

[neom]

72 hour turn around?!?!?! Seems an awfully long time, these days most studios will have the photos turns around within 30 minutes (at least where I live) I'm surprised to see 3 day turn around time.

[JCharante]

Maybe they used a LLM to generate their faq page? Has ChatGPT been known to reiterate content word for word ala github copilot?

[nanidin]

The copy is inconsistent on what you get and how much it costs.

In one place:

> All photoshoots include

> 120 headshots per person

> 3 unique locations per shoot

> 4K photo size

Then the individual shoots have different counts included per tier, some less than indicated for “all photoshoots” on the same page.

[dusted]

Oh that's terrible. As if people didn't already look artificial enough ?

[harvey9]

Just looks like some background swaps and retouching. With a 2 hour turnaround are they actually using a human and a copy of Photoshop? Technically AI since that's how Adobe does some of it's tools.

[tomwojcik]

Sorry for the bad PR, but Ive been trying to get a refund for a few days now. On Friday I paid for the service but was not aware it requires over 20 specific photos, which I don't have at hand. I haven't used the compute time. I didn't even upload anything.

I messaged you under a twitter thread, using the livechat on your website and via the email on the invoice. No response.

My email starts with "Tomasz", is similar to my HN handle and is @gmail.com. Please respond.

[sai_c]

I can't help it, but reading Dom McLaughlin's testimony (scroll down to the examples) "...let's just say I'm not the most photogenic person..." makes me want to instantly go out and hunt down every picture of me ever made and nuke it from space :-).

[z3t4]

I have no problem of photos looking unnatural. Would pay if it made me look like a photo model ;)

Would be great to see examples of the pictures people sent in and the results. The examples on the page are clearly rented pictures of photo models taken by professionally photographers.

[dannypostma]

Solid feedback, I’ll build a before/after page first thing tomorrow.

[cpach]

Interesting concept. The rendering of the shirt buttons could use some improvement.

[gajus]

Gave it a try. It is pretty wild https://twitter.com/kuizinas/status/1638173950806200324

[akrymski]

None of these seem to preserve identity well. I doubt stable diffusion is the right model for this. It should be easy to take a single passport photo and then it into a stylistic headshot. Maybe Pix2Pix or similar?

[rahul_nyc]

I would prefer supporting a local photographer.

[roel_v]

I tried that last time, and got upsold a bunch of 'variations', and looking back on everything I bought the next day, none of them looked all that great. The style was too much... well let's say 'country' (which is an accurate reflection of where I am, but I think a professional photographer should be able to adjust to a client's wishes, and I told her specifically what look I did not want - my market is not local), and the studio didn't even have a few colors of shirts I could try on, nor could she advise on the most basic of styling. I mean, they don't even need whole shirts, just get a few collar/shoulder panels for people to throw on ffs.

I'm soured on the whole 'support local' thing (not only because of this episode). Too many chumps.

[anon7725]

Thanks for mentioning this. AI is poised to disrupt the work of many people, including creatives such as photographers, writers, illustrators, etc.

[jossclimb]

Me too, as its kind of obvious AI has had a part in this. I don't know how, maybe its because I am on the site of topic and its auto-suggestive, but I get that AI vibe.

[toyg]

Not to mention it might be much cheaper. Here in the North of England, I paid half that for a simple headshot on white background from a local photographer. I guess in London it would cost more, but then in London half your friends, and most waiters, are photographers...

[vages]

Sure. But this is a good replacement when your team is in different physical locations.

[dagorenouf]

What I like about this is that it’s not just an A.I gimmick, it solves a real problem. Aka getting professional pics is stressful, time consuming and expensive. I hope it does well

[lofaszvanitt]

When will people fn learn that smiling is a rare thing. Do not smile, no matter what the idiotic photpographer asks you when creating your corpo headhsot.

[junon]

Or, you know, let people do what they enjoy doing in photos.

[halfmatthalfcat]

Is this a joke? Smiling is bad now?

[villgax]

This is something we'll do on our own devices instead of paying anyone a single dime, that was the whole point of stable diffusion

[hammock]

Not to take away from this awesome product and brilliant idea, but we are all hackers here- how can(?) I do this for free?

[operator-name]

1. Collect many good quality photos of yourself, in various lighting, directions and settings.

2. Train Stable Diffusion 2.0 to learn this new embedding, this is a bit of an art rather than a science.

3. Find a nice looking prompt with your new embedding that gives you the desired result.

4. Try ControlNet, LoRa, different base models, etc, always questioning your outputs - there's something subtlety off about them...

5. Continue to fine tune your prompt, input, masking and editing

???

N. Realise that it would have been easier to just get a photograper.

[andrewstuart]

There seem to be vast numbers of startups being created to make AI avatars and profile pictures.

[ICodeSometimes]

2 hour turnaround time implies ya'll are doing it manually behind the scenes?

[RugnirViking]

for 120 pictures per person plus upscaling to 4k thats quite a lot of compute time. If they're running it locally its understandable it might take that long

[Varqu]

How is this different / better than the other submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35241212

[dannypostma]

Looks highly inspired by my other product https://www.profilepicture.ai which I launched back in October.

[okokwhatever]

The more AI surfaces the more I appreciate the real stuff... I must be quite old and boomer, sorry.

[elforce002]

Interesting. I also have "AI" fatigue. I said on a different post that the "AI" wave is going to create a counter-culture where people will crave for non "AI" products and services. I think one of the reasons is a combo between empathy, self-reflection, and fear.

[chillbill]

Here to say that I hate websites that break the browser's back button.

[quickthrower2]

Glad you made it back to say that though!

[skerit]

How did it break for you? Seems to work fine on Firefox.

[dannypostma]

Had to protect myself and join the fight ;)