Our team needed professional profile photos for the Digital Mully website launch. The problem: only one person had a quality headshot from a trade show event, and traditional photography would cost several hundred dollars per person plus scheduling time.
Sean solved it in an afternoon using Google’s ImageFX (Imagen 3) to transform rough iPhone photos into polished, professional headshots that don’t look AI-generated. Total cost: zero. Time investment: minutes per photo.
The Challenge
Digital Mully needed consistent, professional team photos for our website. I had a quality headshot from a trade show where the event organizer paid for professional photography—probably hundreds of dollars per attendee for that setup. The rest of the team had typical iPhone selfies and casual photos, nothing suitable for a professional agency website.
Traditional headshot photography runs $200-500 per person minimum, requires scheduling a photographer, coordinating everyone’s availability, and typically involves travel to a studio. For a small team, that’s $1,000+ and days of coordination before you even start editing.
We needed a solution that produced professional results without the professional photographer price tag and time commitment.
Our Approach
Sean took the roughest photos we had—standard iPhone pictures with inconsistent lighting, backgrounds, and quality—and ran them through Google’s ImageFX with specific prompts for professional headshot style.
The key was prompt engineering: not just “make this look professional,” but specific instructions about lighting, background consistency, professional attire context, and maintaining facial authenticity. The AI needed enough direction to polish the image without making it look fake or over-processed.
Multiple iterations per photo refined the output. First pass established the basic professional look, then adjustments to lighting, background consistency with other team photos, and ensuring natural facial expressions. The goal: photos that look like they came from the same professional photography session, not AI generation.
Results were good enough that we immediately shared the process with one of our e-commerce brand clients struggling with the same issue. Their team photos were a mix of casual snapshots that didn’t match their brand positioning. Within a week, they had updated their entire “About Us” page with consistent, professional team photos—no photographer required.
The Result
Digital Mully website launched with professional, consistent team photos. Cost: $0. Time: approximately 30 minutes total for all photos.
Our e-commerce client updated their team page the same way—they’d been putting off the expense of professional photography for months. Now solved without budget approval or scheduling headaches.
Real cost avoided: $200-500 per person for traditional headshots, plus 2-3 hours of Photoshop editing for consistency and background adjustments. For a 5-person team, that’s $1,000-2,500 and multiple days of coordination.
Time savings: no scheduling photographer, no coordinating team availability, no travel to studio, minimal post-processing. One person with decent prompting skills handles the entire project in an afternoon.
Why This Works
AI image generation has reached the point where it’s practical for real business applications, not just experimentation. The key is understanding what it does well: taking existing photo data and applying professional photography principles (lighting, composition, background) that would normally require expensive equipment and expertise.
This isn’t about creating fake photos—it’s about applying the same post-processing and professional presentation techniques that traditional photographers use in Photoshop, but faster and without the technical skill requirement.
The business impact: professional presentation without the professional service cost. Small teams and e-commerce brands can maintain visual consistency and quality without dedicating significant budget to photography.
Professional presentation doesn’t require professional photographer pricing anymore. The tools exist—you just need to know how to use them effectively.