AI Headshots for a Company Team Page: Keeping Everyone Consistent

A team page looks professional when the headshots look like they were taken on the same day by the same photographer. With AI headshots you can get close to that without booking anyone, but only if every person starts from the same rules: the same preset, similar source photos, the same crop and the same background. The model is consistent when its inputs are. This guide is the brief to send your team.

Why team pages look mismatched

Most mismatched team pages are not caused by bad photos. They are caused by different decisions. One person chose a grey studio backdrop, another an office, a third a softly blurred street. One cropped at the shoulders, another at the chest. One photo is warm, the next is cold. Each headshot is fine on its own; together they look like a collage.

AI generation adds one more source of variation: each run is sampled, so two people using different settings will drift apart even faster than two people using different photographers. The fix is to remove every decision you can before anyone presses the button.

Step 1: pick one preset for everyone

Kitana's headshot tool has four presets. Choose one for the whole page.

Preset	Suits	Watch out for
Corporate	Law, finance, consulting, healthcare admin	Can read as formal on a casual brand
Tech Startup	Product teams, agencies, SaaS	Less suitable for board-level bios
Creative	Studios, design, media	Varies more between people
Executive	Leadership pages, press kits	Too formal for a whole junior team

If your leadership page and your team page are separate, it is reasonable to use Executive for one and Corporate or Tech Startup for the other. On a single grid, do not mix. The longer comparison of the styles is in corporate, startup or creative: which AI headshot style to choose.

Step 2: send everyone the same photo brief

The source photo decides how much the result looks like the person. Send a short brief, not a long one. This is enough:

1. Face the camera, shoulders slightly turned. Phone at eye level, not below the chin.
2. Soft, even light. Face a window on a bright day. No overhead lamp directly above.
3. No filters, no portrait mode. Take the photo with the plain camera and send the original.
4. Nothing covering the face. Sunglasses off; normal glasses are fine if you wear them every day.
5. Add two or three more photos. Different days or rooms, all sharp. These feed identity lock.

That last point matters for a team. Headshot is one of the tools where you can attach up to three extra photos of the same person. On a page where colleagues will compare the result with the real person every morning, the extra likeness is worth it.

Step 3: agree on consent before anyone generates

A headshot is a face on a public page. Before collecting photos, tell people what will happen: which tool, which preset, where the result will be published, and that they can say no and send a normal photo instead. Then let each person approve their own final.

This is not a formality. Kitana's Acceptable Use Policy does not allow making images of someone without their consent, and a coordinator uploading a colleague's holiday photo without asking is precisely the thing it rules out. The simplest arrangement is that each person makes their own headshot, or at least sees and approves it before it goes live. For the wider reasoning, see the ethics of AI-generated photos.

It is also worth being clear about data. Photos are used only to make the result, EXIF and GPS data are stripped, and no biometric identifiers are kept. That is a reasonable thing to include in the message to your team.

Step 4: make the results look like one shoot

Even with one preset, a few details will vary. Check the set side by side, not one at a time.

• Crop. Pick a crop, such as top of the head to mid-chest, and apply it to every final in the same image editor. Your website probably displays them in a square or circle; crop for that.
• Background. If one or two backgrounds came out noticeably different, the background tool can set them to a matching plain colour or backdrop.
• Brightness. A small exposure adjustment on the outliers does more than regenerating them.
• Clothing. The preset handles attire, but if one person's result is formal and the rest are relaxed, run that one again.
• Likeness. Ask each person: "Would a client recognise you from this?" If not, regenerate with more reference photos.

A run that fails is refunded, and running a good photo again is often cheaper than fixing a result by hand. On Pro, a variation pack of 2 or 4 counts as one creation and gives each person options to choose from.

Honest limits

AI headshots are good for a team page, a Slack avatar and a conference speaker list. They are not a substitute for an official ID photo, and some regulated fields have their own rules about what staff photos must be. If your industry expects unedited photographs, follow that.

They also have a practical limit: a headshot that is noticeably smoother or younger than the person will be noticed in the first video call. Aim for "a good photo of you on a good day", not a different person. The advice in how to create a professional headshot without a photographer applies to each individual; this guide is only about making many of them agree.

Planning the allowance for a team

On the free allowance, each person gets two creations a day, one every four hours, with no card. For most people that is enough for a headshot: one run, maybe a second. Free results are deleted after seven days, so download finals the same day and store them in your shared drive.

If one person is producing several headshots, for example redoing leadership bios, Pro removes the wait, allows six a day and offers variation packs. The details are on the pricing page.

A worked example: a twelve-person agency

Picture a design agency with twelve people and a team page that currently mixes wedding photos, holiday snaps and one very old passport-style picture. The office manager wants a consistent grid within two weeks.

1. Day 1. She picks Tech Startup as the preset, and a square crop from the top of the head to mid-chest. She writes the photo brief above into a short message.
2. Day 1. She tests the brief on herself and one designer. Both results sit together on a draft of the page. The designer's background is warmer, so she adds "light grey backdrop" to the notes for anyone who uses the background tool afterwards.
3. Day 2. She sends the message to everyone with a clear opt-out: anyone who prefers a normal photo can send one instead. Two people do. That is fine; their photos are matched in crop and brightness.
4. Days 2 to 5. Each person makes their own headshot, attaching two or three extra photos for identity lock, and sends back the final they like.
5. Day 6. She lays out all twelve, fixes crop and exposure on three outliers, and asks two people to regenerate because colleagues did not recognise them.
6. Day 7. The page goes live. The finals are stored in a shared folder with each person's name.

Nobody needed Pro. Each person used one or two of their own free creations, and the whole thing fitted in a week.

Common mistakes

• Letting everyone choose their own preset. The single biggest cause of a mismatched grid.
• Using a group photo as the source. Faces cropped from group shots are small and soft, and the result drifts.
• Skipping approval. Publishing a colleague's AI headshot they have not seen is a consent problem and a morale problem.
• Over-smoothing. A result that looks ten years younger will be noticed. Regenerate rather than keep it.
• Forgetting the seven-day deletion. Free results are deleted after seven days. Collect the files as they arrive.
• Mixing AI headshots and real photos without matching them. If some people opt out, match crop, background and brightness so their photos sit in the grid naturally.

When a headshot is the wrong tool

Some people want something more playful for internal tools, such as Slack or a staff wiki. For that, the avatar tool offers stylised portraits that are clearly not photographs, which avoids any confusion with the public team page. Keep the realistic headshot for customer-facing pages and the stylised avatar for internal fun, and do not mix them on one grid.

Start with one person

Before rolling out to twenty people, test the brief on two. Make both headshots with the chosen preset, put them side by side on the actual page layout, and adjust the brief if they look different. Then send it to everyone else.

The AI headshot tool runs in the browser studio and in the Kitana app, with the same four presets in both.