How to do it, step by step
- Find a window and turn off everything else Stand about a metre from a window with no direct sun on it and turn your face roughly 45 degrees towards it. One source of one colour is the whole lighting setup.
- Prop the phone at eye height, a metre and a half away Books, a shelf, a tripod or a friend. Use the rear camera at 2x, not the front camera, and angle the lens down a fraction rather than up.
- Frame wider than the final square Include the head and the top of both shoulders with room to spare, so you can move the crop afterwards without clipping the chin or the crown.
- Shoot ten to fifteen frames through a real reaction Hold the shutter down, or set a timer and look away and back as it counts. The usable frame is about two seconds after a laugh peaks, not during it.
- Edit only colour, exposure, shine and one or two temporary marks Correct the white balance, set the exposure on the face, bring a hot forehead down and heal anything that will be gone in a fortnight. Leave skin texture and face shape alone.
- Crop square, then check it at thumbnail size Put the face at 55 to 65 percent of the square with the head slightly above centre. Shrink it to about 40 pixels and confirm you can still tell it is you.
Compose for a circle, not a rectangle
Almost every platform crops your upload to a square and then displays it inside a circle. Whatever you framed carefully in the corners is gone before anybody sees it, and the crop is taken from the centre, so an off-centre head gets clipped.
Shoot and crop for that shape deliberately. Put your head slightly above centre, leave a small margin of space above the crown, and include the top of the shoulders so the head is attached to a body rather than floating. The face wants to fill somewhere around 55 to 65 percent of the square. Much smaller and it vanishes at display size. Much larger and the crown or chin gets cut by the circle.
Leave yourself room to crop. Shoot a little wider than the final frame so you can move the square around afterwards rather than discovering the chin is clipped.
Then look at the result small. Shrink it on screen until it is about the size of a fingernail, which is roughly how it appears next to a message or a comment. Most profile pictures fail at that size for one reason: too much scene and too little face.
The light that works on a face
A window with no direct sun coming through it, and nothing else on.
Stand about a metre from the glass and turn your face roughly 45 degrees towards it. That gives a soft gradient from the lit side of the face to the shadow side, which is what makes a face read as three dimensional, and it puts a catchlight in each eye. Eyes without a catchlight look flat and slightly dead, and it is the most common difference between a snapshot and a portrait.
Switch every other light in the room off. Two sources at different colour temperatures put a cool cast on one cheek and a warm one on the other, and no single white balance correction can fix both, so the skin reads as uneven.
Avoid three things: overhead light, which puts the eyes in shadow, direct on-camera flash, which flattens the face and produces a hard shadow outline on the wall behind you, and a bright window directly behind you, which turns you into a silhouette. If you must shoot with a window behind, tap your face on screen and drag the exposure up until the face is correct and let the window blow out.
Lens, distance and height
| Where it is going | Crop | Include | Lens and distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work or professional profile | Square, shown as a circle | Head and the top of both shoulders, plain background | Rear 2x, 1.5 m, lens at eye level |
| Dating profile, main photo | Portrait, often cropped to square in the grid | Head and upper body, a background that says something true | Rear 2x, 2 m, lens at chest to eye height |
| Social account | Circle | Face only, very tight | Rear 2x, 1.5 m |
| Messaging avatar | Small circle | Face filling the frame, high contrast against the background | Rear 2x, 1.5 m |
| Personal site or CV | Whatever you choose | Head and shoulders, generous margin for the designer | Rear 2x or 3x, 2 m |
Two rules run through all of it. Use the rear camera rather than the front one, because a wide lens at arm's length enlarges whatever is nearest it, and the difference at a metre and a half is obvious in a side by side. And put the lens at or just above your eye line, angled down a fraction, which narrows the jaw slightly and opens the eyes. Below the eye line does the opposite.
Distance is the part people skip because it needs a second person or a timer. It is also the part that matters most, so prop the phone on a stack of books and use a timer or a clicker.
Expression, and how to actually get one
The instruction to smile naturally has never worked for anybody. Timing works instead.
A genuine laugh peaks with the eyes half closed and the mouth wide, and then decays over about two seconds. The usable frame is in the decay, when the eyes have opened and the mouth has softened but the muscles around the eyes are still engaged. So the method is to shoot continuously through a real reaction rather than asking for an expression and pressing once.
Practical versions: have whoever is holding the phone say something genuinely funny and hold the shutter down; or on a timer, look away, take a breath, and turn back to the lens as it counts down, which resets the face.
For the eyes, look at the lens, not at the preview of yourself. It is a small thing and it is the difference between somebody looking at you and somebody looking slightly past you, which reads as distraction. On a phone the lens is usually at the top corner, not the middle of the screen.
Turn your shoulders 20 to 30 degrees away and bring your face back to the lens. Square shoulders read as a passport photo. Then push your chin forward and drop it a fraction, which separates the jaw line from the neck. It feels ridiculous and it photographs well.
The editing that belongs here
A profile picture is a photo of a person that other people will compare against the person, so the editing brief is narrower than for anything else.
Do this much: correct the white balance, set the exposure so the face is lit rather than the room, take a hot forehead down if there is one, and heal one or two temporary marks. That list is deliberately short and it is covered in detail on the colour cast, shine and blemish pages.
Do not smooth the skin. Do not whiten the teeth past the brightness of the whites of your eyes. Do not reshape anything. A profile picture has one job, which is to let somebody recognise you, and every one of those three works directly against it. The most common failure in this whole category is not a badly lit photo, it is a well edited photo of somebody who turns out not to exist.
Ours, so discount it: ShutterAI has a burst picker called Best Face that goes through a run of frames and surfaces the ones where the eyes are open and sharp, which is the tedious part of shooting ten frames on a timer. It has not shipped. It reaches iPhone this fall, free to start, and the early list is on the homepage.
Three tests before you upload
The thumbnail test. Shrink it to about 40 pixels and look. If you cannot tell it is you, or the face has become a pale blob against a busy background, the framing is too loose or the contrast against the background is too low. A plain wall a couple of shades away from your hair and skin fixes both.
The door test. Would somebody who had only seen this picture recognise you if you walked up to them? This is the test that catches heavy editing, an unusual angle, sunglasses, a photo of you at a wedding in full makeup when you turn up in a jumper, and a picture taken four years ago. If the answer is no, the photo has failed at the only thing it was for.
The consistency test. Use the same picture, or one from the same set, across every platform where people might look you up. Recognition across services is worth more than variety, and a set shot in one session in the same light will match without effort.
One more, which is really a maintenance note. Update it when you change, not on a schedule. A profile picture that is more than about two years old is a small ongoing inconvenience to everybody who is trying to find you.
Questions people ask
How do you take a good profile picture?
Window light with every other light off, the rear camera at 2x from about a metre and a half, lens at eye height, head and shoulders filling around 60 percent of a square crop, and ten or more frames shot through a real reaction rather than one posed frame.
Should a profile picture be a close-up or a wider shot?
Close, but not cropped to the face alone. Include the top of both shoulders so the head is attached to a body, and let the face take up roughly 55 to 65 percent of the square. Anything wider disappears at the size these are actually displayed.
Can I use a selfie as a profile picture?
You can, and it will be the weaker option, because the front camera is a wide lens held at arm's length and it enlarges whatever is nearest it. If a selfie is the only option, extend your arm fully and hold the phone slightly above your eye line.
How much editing is acceptable on a profile picture?
Colour correction, exposure, shine reduction and one or two temporary marks. Nothing that changes texture or shape. The picture exists so people can recognise you, so any edit that makes recognition harder has defeated the purpose of the photo.
What background works best for a profile picture?
A plain surface a couple of shades away from your hair and skin, with two or three metres of space between you and it. The distance gives a soft background without needing portrait mode, and the contrast keeps your outline readable when the picture is displayed small.