DEV Community: GBTI Network

How to Generate Professional LinkedIn Headshots Using Nano Banana

GBTI Network — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 20:13:08 +0000

By Naresh Devineni, GBTI Network Member

Creating a professional LinkedIn headshot doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive.

In this guide, I will share a simple method for producing AI-generated headshots that look authentic, clean, and career-ready using Nano Banana.

Step 1: Find Your Reference Image

Look for a professional headshot you like (make sure you’re using it ethically and legally).

This image will serve as your style reference — the goal is to recreate its lighting, framing, and background style with your own photo later.

Step 2: Let AI Describe It

Upload your chosen reference image to an AI chatbot (like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude) and ask it to describe the photo.
This helps generate a consistent, professional image prompt that Nano Banana can follow.

Here is an example prompt:

For the uploaded reference image:

### ✅ Be Minimal

Only describe what is clearly visible.

### Never Include

* Racial, ethnic, or skin tone descriptors
* Facial features, hair details, body type
* Accessories, age, or gender indicators

### Only Include What’s Visible

**Expression:** Simple description only (e.g., “warm smile” or “neutral expression”)
**Clothing:** Describe exactly what’s worn – color, garment type, style
**Clothing shadows:** Note visible shadows under lapels, collars, or folds
**Lighting:** Direction and quality (e.g., “soft frontal lighting” or “three-point lighting”)
**Facial shadows:** Shadows under chin, on neck, or one side of face — or state “evenly lit”
**Background:** Exact color, brightness level, and subtlety of gradient (if any)
**Background shadows:** Only if visible — otherwise, state “no background shadow”
**Framing:** What’s visible (e.g., “head and shoulders” or “upper chest to top of head”)
**Position:** Head/body angle relative to camera

### Rules

1. Describe only what you actually see — don’t infer or imagine details
2. Keep descriptions factual and minimal
3. Any gradients should be described as **VERY SUBTLE** with minimal tonal variation

### Critical Restrictions

CRITICAL RESTRICTIONS:
1. NO multiple backgrounds or layered backgrounds
2. NO rounded corners or circular crops
3. NO additional background colors or borders
4. NO dramatic background gradients – background should be evenly lit or have only minimal, natural variation
5. Standard rectangular crop only
6. DO NOT add shadows if none exist in the reference image

Step 3: Generate Your Headshot

Upload your own photo to Nano Banana.
Paste the AI-generated description as your image prompt.
Generate your professional headshot.

Nano Banana will produce an image that matches the lighting, framing, and background style of your reference photo — but featuring your own face.

Here is an example headshot and prompt:

For the uploaded picture, generate an image of:

Expression: Warm, genuine smile

Clothing: Dark gray textured suit with light blue dress shirt and navy blue tie with small dot pattern

Clothing shadows: Visible shadows under suit lapels, along tie, and in jacket fabric folds

Lighting: Soft, natural outdoor lighting from front

Facial shadows: Face evenly lit with minimal shadows

Background: Blurred outdoor corporate/office building environment (bokeh effect) with modern glass windows and architectural elements visible, blue-gray and white tones

Background shadows: Background is out of focus, no distinct shadows visible

Framing: Head and upper torso to mid-chest level

Position: Body angled slightly to left, face turned toward camera at slight angle

CRITICAL RESTRICTIONS:

NO multiple backgrounds or layered backgrounds
NO rounded corners or circular crops
NO additional background colors or borders
NO dramatic background gradients – background should be evenly lit or have only minimal, natural lighting variation
Standard rectangular crop only
DO NOT add shadows if none exist in the reference image

The Result

You’ll get a professional, consistent, and natural-looking headshot that reflects your desired style, without the guesswork or endless prompt tweaking.

Sounds easy?
It is!

Thanks for reading this article.

Visit my article "15 Ready-to-Use Nano Banana Prompts for Realistic LinkedIn Headshots" to see how I put this method to use!

Also consider joining me on the GBTI Network where we share tips like this regularly inside our own private discord network.

15 Free React Landing Page Templates to help Launch your SaaS

GBTI Network — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 13:42:28 +0000

This past month we worked hard to make the Fall Y-Combinator 2025 submission window with one of our projects, and to do this we wanted to have a very basic landing page ready for our product demo site.

This sprint lead us to investigate the best free React + Tailwind CSS templates we could find. We performed our search using tools like ChatGPT, Google, Dev.to, Daily.dev, and Github to find the highest quality free templates available.

Through our research, we compiled the best 15 completely free React landing page templates we were able to find and have showcased them in our lasted article:

"15+ Free REACT Landing Page Templates to Launch your SaaS"

We hope you enjoy our efforts and if you are working on a free React landing page template and would like us to add it to our list above, leave a comment below and we'll consider adding it!

Thanks for paying attention!

Using Hue to create colorful animations 🌈

GBTI Network — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 21:41:08 +0000

Hi fellow devs! 👋

We're excited to share our latest coding experiment and what turned out to be a surprisingly fun tool: a browser-based hue animation generator.

https://gbti.network/products/js-animate-hue/

You know that moment when you're adjusting the hue slider in your favorite image editor and watching your image cycle through the entire color spectrum - from electric blues, vibrant magentas, and sunset oranges? Haven't you thought at some point, "This transition would make an incredible animation"?

We decided to scratch that itch and build exactly that: a JavaScript tool that transforms any image into a mesmerizing color-shifting animation.

What it does

The tool takes any image you upload and creates smooth animations by cycling through hue transformations. But it goes beyond just basic hue shifts - you can also animate brightness and contrast changes to create some truly psychedelic effects.

Core Controls:

Interactive SVG color wheel - Drag handles on a half-circle hue selector to define exactly which colors your animation cycles through (-180° to +180°)
Brightness animation - Ranges from -100 (completely dark) to +100 (super bright) with presets like "Sunrise Effect" and "Fade to Black"
Contrast animation - Adjust from -100 (flat/washed out) to +100 (ultra-sharp) with options like "Dramatic Reveal" and "Vintage Film"
Animation timing - Control frame count (1-360 frames), speed (1-60 FPS), and seamless looping
Resolution scaling - Output from 50% to 150% of original size for file size optimization

Smart Presets:

The tool includes thoughtfully designed presets for each effect:

Hue: Full spectrum rainbow, warm sunset tones, cool ocean shifts
Brightness: Sunrise/Dawn Effect, Fade to Black, Flash/Glow, Breathing Light, Reveal Effect
Contrast: Dramatic Reveal, Dreamy to Vivid, Pop Effect, Sharp to Soft, Vintage Film

The technical bits & export formats

What started as a simple hue-shifting experiment evolved into a pretty robust image processing tool. Under the hood, it uses:

Canvas API for real-time image manipulation and frame generation
Web Workers with gif.js and gifenc libraries for smooth GIF encoding without freezing the browser
MediaRecorder API for high-quality WebM and MP4 video output with configurable bitrates
SVG-based controls for that smooth, interactive color wheel

Export Options:

The tool supports three major formats, each optimized for different use cases:

GIF Animation - Universal compatibility, perfect for web embedding and social sharing
WebM Video - Modern codec with excellent compression, ideal for web platforms
MP4 Video (H.264) - Industry standard with multiple quality settings:
- Low (5 Mbps) - Smaller files for quick sharing
- Medium (10 Mbps) - Balanced quality and size
- High (20 Mbps) - Professional quality
- Lossless (50+ Mbps) - Maximum quality for final output

Social Media Ready:

The output formats work perfectly across all major platforms:

X (Twitter) - MP4 with H.264 codec (up to 512MB, 140 seconds)
LinkedIn - MP4 with H.264 and AAC audio (up to 5GB, 10 minutes)
Instagram - MP4 with H.264 for Feed, Reels, and Stories (up to 4GB)

The codec implementations include built-in brightness and contrast adjustments that work at the pixel level, giving you smooth transitions that would be difficult to achieve in traditional video editing software.

The whole thing runs entirely in your browser - no servers, no uploads, no tracking. Your images never leave your device.

Get Started

Check out the project:

Give it a try and let us know what you create! We'd love to see what kind of psychedelic masterpieces people come up with. Upload your creations to giphy and share them in the comments or tag us on social media @gbti_network!

Introducing Perplexity AI Lookups for WordPress

GBTI Network — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 13:59:44 +0000

At the GBTI Network, we’re committed to developing novel tools that empower publishers and readers alike. Today, we’re announcing the release of our WordPress Perplexity AI Plugin, which enables AI-powered lookups on highlighted text within your WordPress content.

What does this plugin do?

This plugin allows site visitors to:

Highlight any text on a post or page.
Optionally click a Perplexity icon to open a Perplexity instance with the selected query attached.

This creates a novel way for readers to engage with your content without interrupting their reading flow and Receive AI-generated lookups instantly, offering definitions, explanations, or contextual expansions for the highlighted text.

Why did we build it?

Writers often struggle to balance brevity with sufficient explanation. Excessive footnotes, hyperlinks, or side notes can disrupt readability and clutter pages. This simple implementation assists these challenges by:

Providing readers with on-demand context and deeper understanding.
Allowing writers to maintain concise content without sacrificing detail.
Enhancing engagement and time on page by encouraging interactive exploration.

It's a very simple and effective implementation!

Use cases

Educational sites: Students can quickly look up terms and definitions while reading course material.
Blogs: Readers can gain clarity on concepts without breaking their reading rhythm.
Technical documentation: Developers and technical readers can explore deeper context for terms and functions on-demand.

Getting started

To install the plugin please visit our full release announcement for download and setup instructions:
Introducing Our New WordPress Perplexity AI Plugin

Future plans

We are exploring additional features, including:

Custom prompt templates for specialized sites and terminology.
Admin-side analytics for usage tracking and content strategy insights.
Expanded AI provider support for diversified lookup outputs.

Contributing

We welcome community contributions to extend and refine this plugin. If you’re interested, please visit our GitHub repository for issue tracking and PR guidelines.

Final thoughts

AI-enhanced reading experiences are becoming increasingly common. Our Perplexity AI Plugin is a small step towards creating more interactive and intelligent web content in novel ways.

We look forward to your feedback and suggestions as we continue improving this tool for the WordPress community.

Automating Git Sign-offs Per Project: A Complete Guide

GBTI Network — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 02:23:55 +0000

Git sign-offs provide accountability and transparency in distributed development environments. The standard implementation requires manual inclusion of the -s flag with each commit, which introduces potential for human error and inconsistency.

Our technical guide presents multiple methods for automating Git sign-offs at the project level, arranged in order of increasing complexity: commit templates, Git aliases, and language-specific scripts (Node.js, PowerShell, Python). Each approach is documented with implementation steps optimized for Windows environments.

The guide includes PowerShell commands for local Git configuration, template creation, and script implementation. Code examples demonstrate how to integrate sign-offs into existing workflows without disrupting development processes.

Complete documentation: https://gbti.network/devops/frameworks/git/how-to-automatically-sign-off-git-commits/

Thanks for paying attention!

Reimagining WordPress Category Management with Advanced Taxonomy Manager

GBTI Network — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 12:58:38 +0000

While building the GBTI Network and managing over 80 categories, it became clear that the native WordPress category management system was outdated. The lack of drag-and-drop functionality, slow hard refreshes, and absence of quick editing features slowed down the process of organizing content meaningfully.

This frustration led to the development of Advanced Taxonomy Manager, a fully AJAX-powered plugin designed to modernize category and taxonomy management in WordPress.

The Problem

Managing categories in WordPress has long felt like working in slow motion.

With every change triggering a page reload, and no quick way to reorder or nest categories, maintaining a clean and logical taxonomy structure becomes tedious fast.

Platforms like Slack and Discord have long since solved this, allowing users to quickly organize channels and categories with ease. WordPress, however, lagged behind.

The Solution: Advanced Taxonomy Manager

Advanced Taxonomy Manager brings a modern interface to WordPress taxonomy management.

With this plugin, you can:

Drag and drop categories to nest or un-nest them
Quickly edit categories in a collapsible side drawer
Avoid hard refreshes entirely for a smoother workflow
Generate category descriptions with OpenAI integration
Enjoy better visibility of parent and child categories
Export and Import entire taxonomies, quickly.

Plugin Screenshot

Versions Available

We’ve built two versions of the plugin to meet different needs:

Advanced Taxonomy Manager

Full-featured version, available exclusively to GBTI Network members.
Advanced Category Manager

Focused on categories only, this version is freely available in the WordPress plugin directory.

Check out the free version on the WordPress Plugin Directory

Learn more about the full version for GBTI Network members

Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I’d love to hear them in the comments.

GBTI Network

The GBTI Network is a professional co-op network where members have opportunities to share profits, publish products, and contribute articles—all powered by community and GitHub sponsorships.

Sponsor our work by becoming a GBTI Network Member (powered by GitHub Sponsorship).

Stay Connected

WordPress MU Plugin that will automatically strip image metadata from uploaded images

GBTI Network — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 22:43:18 +0000

We're excited to introduce Clean Image Metadata, a lightweight and powerful must-use plugin for WordPress that automatically removes all embedded metadata from images as they are uploaded to your site.

No configuration. No UI. Just clean, metadata-free images—by default.

What It Does

Clean Image Metadata automatically strips sensitive and unnecessary metadata from images during upload. This includes:

EXIF data (e.g., camera make/model, GPS coordinates, timestamp)
IPTC data (e.g., copyright info, keywords, captions)
XMP data (e.g., AI generation markers, editing history)
Any other embedded metadata commonly stored in image files

All this happens silently in the background, with no user action needed.

Why install it on your WordPress website?

We've listed some reasons below that may warrant the use of a MU plugin like this:

Privacy

Removes GPS location data
Strips device/software identifiers
Eliminates potentially identifying timestamps

Reducing Bias

Removes AI attribution data to prevent content discrimination
Helps ensure content is judged purely on merit—not metadata

Technical Benefits

Smaller file sizes in some cases
Reduced risk of metadata-based vulnerabilities
Cleaner, leaner media library for developers and editors

How to Install

As a must-use (MU) plugin, installation is simple:

Upload the clean-image-meta.php file to your WordPress site's: /wp-content/mu-plugins/ folder
That’s it. The plugin activates automatically.

If the mu-plugins folder doesn't exist, just create it.

How It Works

Hooks into WordPress’s image upload process
Uses PHP’s GD library to strip metadata
Falls back to ImageMagick if needed
Preserves image quality and works with: -- JPEG -- PNG -- WebP -- GIF
Applies to both original uploads and generated thumbnails/sizes

🧪 Troubleshooting Tips

Make sure GD or ImageMagick is installed on your server

How to Download

This is a free release. Please visit our product page here for information on how to download: Clean Image Metadata

What is the GBTI Network?

The GBTI Network is a professional co-op network where members have opportunities to share profits, publish products, and contribute articles—all powered by community and GitHub sponsorships.

Sponsor our work by becoming a GBTI Network Member (powered by GitHub Sponsorship).

Membership Benefits

Becoming a GBTI Member unlocks premium tools and perks:

Access to Growing List of Premium WordPress Plugins
Private GitHub Repositories with advanced tools and resources.
Membership Directory Listings (optional)
Engaging Communities on Private Discord, Reddit, Private Minecraft Survival Server and more.