AI headshots vs a real photographer — the honest version.

Where AI wins

Speed, cost and iteration. A render takes about 15 seconds and costs 1 credit — against a session fee, travel and a week of retouching turnaround. You can test six lighting directions before lunch and reshoot after every haircut. For the high-churn surface area of modern professional life — profiles, bios, speaker pages, socials — that loop is unbeatable.

• ~15 seconds per render, 1 credit per look test
• Unlimited brief tweaks — change a word, shoot again
• Reshoot any time your look changes, at zero marginal effort
• Test lighting directions before commissioning a real shoot

Where the photographer wins

Final art and physical presence. A photographer directs you in the room — micro-adjustments to posture, hands and expression that no reference set captures. They deliver retouched finals that hold up at print size, on book jackets, in frames on boardroom walls. And some contexts simply require a human-shot image by rule or by expectation.

If the photo will hang on a wall, lead a press campaign, or represent you where the stakes are highest, hire the human.

Use them together

This is the workflow we actually recommend. Use look tests to find your direction — the light, lens and styling that suit your face — for a handful of credits. Then take that winning brief to a photographer as your shot list. You walk into the session knowing exactly what you want, and their skill lands it at final quality. The AI does the exploring; the photographer does the committing.