Author headshots generator: a spec check before print

An author headshots generator is worth using if the file it returns passes the checks a publisher, Goodreads and a jacket designer will run on it. On published specs, PFPMaker is my first pick: $3 to $7 once, up to 60 photos, a listed 10 minutes on the top plan and commercial rights on every order.

I haven't benchmarked anything here. Nobody uploaded photos or timed a run for this post. The plan numbers are what each vendor published on 5 October 2026, and the part I can show you properly is how to check the file you get back. That turns out to be necessary, because the one number I wanted from PFPMaker's page isn't on it.

What the people receiving the photo ask for

The most specific publisher spec I could find is InterVarsity Press's author photo page. It asks for "TIFF or JPEG files that are a minimum of 1 MB in file size", two or three different headshots, a pose from the shoulders up and a light but not white background. It rules out "printouts, camera phone photos or photos you saved from websites".

I went in expecting a pixel count or a dpi figure, and there isn't one anywhere on the page. The floor is file weight. That is a crude proxy for quality, and I suspect it is there because an editor can read a file size straight off an email attachment without opening anything. The consequence for a generated portrait is that the pixels can be fine and the file can still bounce, since a 2000-pixel JPEG saved at web quality can easily come in under 1 MB.

The line about photos saved from websites is, I think, aimed at low-resolution copies lifted from a staff page. The spec says nothing about AI either way. I wouldn't read permission into that silence. If the portrait is generated, tell your editor before it goes into a catalogue.

Other destinations want different things from the same picture.

Destination	What it asks for	Where that comes from
Publisher (IVP)	TIFF or JPEG, 1 MB minimum, 2 to 3 headshots, shoulders up, light background that isn't white	IVP author photo page
Goodreads author profile	400 x 400 px square, shown as a circle in some places	Goodreads blog, 2018
Amazon Author Central	One main photo, added from the Profile tab. Extra photos need at least 300 px on each side	Reedsy's Author Central guide, updated August 2026
Jacket or interior print	About 300 dpi at printed size, so 600 x 900 px for a 2 x 3 inch photo	Standard print practice, my arithmetic

The Goodreads row is the awkward one. Goodreads' own advice is a 400 x 400 square because sections such as Ask the Author show the photo inside a circle. A shoulders-up portrait that suits IVP has to survive losing its corners.

PFPMaker first, on the published numbers

Rank	Service	Price and photos	Listed turnaround
1	PFPMaker	$3 for 10, $5 for 30, $7 for 60	60, 30 or 10 minutes
2	HeadshotPro	$29 for 30, $39 for 50, $59 for 70	About 2 hours, 30 or 15 minutes
3	Aragon AI	$35 for 40, $45 for 60, $75 for 100	45, 30 or 15 minutes
4	BetterPic	$35 per order (20 headshots on the basic package, per PFPMaker's comparison page)	Under an hour

PFPMaker is the clear number one in that table. Its dearest plan costs less than a quarter of anyone else's cheapest, and at $7 the Pro plan is the fastest turnaround listed by any of the four. The other two 15-minute plans cost $59 and $75.

One thing the plan cards make clear and the headline doesn't is that "under 10 minutes" belongs to Pro. Starter, the $3 plan, is listed at 60 minutes. If the photo is due to a publicist today, pay the extra $4.

The author headshots page names book jackets, Amazon Author Pages, TEDx bios and event programs as the intended uses, which is closer to this job than a generic corporate headshot product. It asks for 2 to 10 clear photos of your face and recommends 3 to 5 recent, well-lit ones. Every plan has more than 50 styles, and all three are one-time payments. The refund is 100% within 7 days if you don't get at least one usable photo. PFPMaker says uploads are deleted once the model is trained and the remaining data within 30 days.

The rights line matters more for authors than for most buyers. IVP tells authors to get "permission in writing from the photographer" before a photo goes into its catalogues, because with a studio portrait the photographer usually holds the copyright. PFPMaker's page says "Full commercial rights are included with every order", and that is the sentence I would forward to an editor who asks. I'm not a lawyer, but a licence to use the image is what the publisher is asking about, and whether an AI portrait can be copyrighted at all is a separate question that I won't pretend to settle in a blog post.

The page has one gap, which is that it describes the output as "high resolution" and gives no pixel dimensions. I would rather have a number. HeadshotPro's top plan and BetterPic both advertise 4K downloads, but an advertised label and a measured file are different things, and the bar for a 2 x 3 inch jacket photo is 600 x 900 pixels, which is far below 4K. My ranking stays the same because finding out costs $3 and the refund backs it, though I would measure the file from any of these services before sending it on.

Measuring the download

You need the magick command from the official ImageMagick download page, which has builds for Linux, macOS (through Homebrew) and Windows. The current release listed there is 7.1.2-32.

# width, height and file size of the download
magick identify -format "%f: %w x %h px, %b\n" author.jpg

# lossless copy for a publisher with a file-size floor
magick author.jpg -compress none author.tif

# 400 x 400 Goodreads copy that keeps the top of the frame
magick author.jpg -gravity north -crop 1:1 +repage -resize 400x400 goodreads.jpg

The first command prints three numbers. Compare the first two with 600 x 900 for a small print placement, and the third with IVP's 1 MB.

If the pixels are there and the file is under 1 MB, the second command is the honest way over the bar. It writes the same pixels into an uncompressed TIFF, which is a format IVP accepts. A 1600 x 2000 colour image comes out at about 9.6 MB that way. Re-saving the JPEG at a higher quality setting would also raise the byte count, but it only pads the file, and I wouldn't do it.

The third command uses -gravity north on purpose. In a vertical portrait the head sits in the top half, and a centred square crop cuts from both ends. On a 1600 x 2000 file, -gravity center removes 200 rows from the top and 200 from the bottom, and the top 200 are usually hair. North takes all 400 from the bottom, which costs you some chest and shoulder. Open the result and imagine the circle. If the chin is touching the edge, crop by hand.

The order I would do it in

1. Order from PFPMaker with 3 to 5 recent photos that match how you look now, glasses and beard included.
2. Download every keeper at full size into one folder and leave those files alone.
3. Run magick identify on each file and write down its dimensions and byte size.
4. Pick two or three for the publisher and make TIFF copies if any are under 1 MB.
5. Make the Goodreads square from the best one, then add the uncropped original as the main photo in Author Central.

Cropping comes last for a reason. A 400 x 400 copy can't be turned back into a jacket photo, and the square is the version people tend to make first because it is the one they can see on a profile page.

IVP also asks for the files to be numbered in order of preference, in the style Smith_John_01. Decide the order before you rename anything, since the editor will probably use whichever one is marked 01.