Headshot File Size: LinkedIn, Casting and Client Delivery on Mac

Each site publishes its own cap, and they differ by almost four to one. The table lists what the platforms’ own pages say. Where a page gives only a pixel minimum, no file size is shown, and the headshot file size you can upload is then whatever the form accepts.

Read the form you are filling in before trusting any table, including this one. Sizes change.

LinkedIn accepts a PNG or JPG from 400 × 400 up to 7680 × 4320 pixels and 8 MB. A square JPG at 1600 pixels on the long side clears the minimum four times over and lands far below the cap, so the LinkedIn photo size is rarely the problem. The 18 MB master is.

Crop to a square, with the face centered, before you resize. Smol’s fill mode crops but gives you no control over what is cut, so use fit after cropping in Preview or your editor. Smol’s defaults help here: quality 75, metadata stripped, and a 2000 × 2000 pixel fit unless you change it.

Casting Networks wants a JPG, PNG or GIF of at least 360 × 360 pixels and 30 MB or less. Spotlight asks for at least 500 × 500 pixels at 72 dpi, with a 10 × 8 ratio recommended. Actor headshot file requirements are mostly minimums, so the risk is sending too little resolution, not too many bytes.

Two practical points. Spotlight recommends a 10 × 8 ratio, so a portrait 8 × 10 crop at a 2000-pixel long edge gives 1600 × 2000, well over every minimum above. And an awards entry is a different job: the Television Academy asks lead performers for at least 2400 × 2400 pixels, so keep an unresized master for those.

For print, count pixels, not the DPI tag. An 8 × 10 inch print at 300 PPI needs 2400 × 3000 pixels, a 5 × 7 needs 1500 × 2100. For web, 1600 to 2000 pixels on the long edge is a reasonable range for web galleries and casting sites.

Headshot resolution for print and web comes down to one number you control. The DPI field in a file is a label; Spotlight’s 72 dpi and a 300 PPI print can describe the same pixels. Smol sets quality and the maximum pixel dimension, not the DPI label, so choose the dimension from the table below and leave the tag alone.

Use Compress, not Convert, because quality applies to Compress only. The quality numbers below are our starting points, not guarantees: check the output against the cap and step down if it is over. Smol sets quality and pixel size, not output bytes.

Smol chooses JPEG chroma by quality: 4:2:0 up to 75, 4:2:2 at 80 to 85, and 4:4:4 from 90. That is why print at 90 keeps the most color detail around hair and fabric edges. For a hard cap you can also type a target size from 4 to 4096 KB in Neural mode; it is a band, not a ceiling, and slow, about 28 seconds for one 768 × 512 image.

Smol strips metadata by default, which removes EXIF, GPS, IPTC and XMP, including copyright and contact fields. For web sets that is a privacy win. For print and portfolio masters you may want your credit kept, so switch stripping off in settings.

Keep the retouched masters in one folder and treat every other size as a copy. By default Smol writes a _compressed copy beside the original and never overwrites it.

1. 1

   Export the finals at full size

   Export JPEG or TIFF from your editor at the largest size you may need, for print and awards.

2. 2

   Crop LinkedIn squares first

   Crop in Preview or your editor, because Smol’s fill mode crops without letting you pick the area.

3. 3

   Drop the folder into Smol

   Choose Compress, output JPG, then pick quality and maximum dimension from the settings table.

4. 4

   Run one pass per deliverable

   One job makes one size, and the default name is name_compressed.ext, so move each result into a folder named for its use before the next run.

5. 5

   Check the largest output

   Get Info on the biggest file and compare it to the cap. If it is over, lower quality by 5 or the dimension by 200 and rerun.

Deliver two sets: a web set small enough to email or post, and a full set for print and retouching rights. Email encoding adds roughly 37%, as our email size guide measured, so five finals totaling 20 MB can still bounce at Gmail’s 25 MB cap.

• Web set: JPG, quality 75, maximum dimension 2048, a few MB per folder.
• Print set: quality 90, maximum dimension 3000 or higher, sent by download link.
• Contact sheet or proofs: quality 60 and 1200 pixels, enough to choose from.
• Release forms and invoices as PDFs: Small preset for email, then check the size.

Compressing is not editing, so keep retouching in your editor. Our photographer compression guide covers batch settings, and photographer client delivery covers galleries and folders. iPhone sessions are covered in the HEIC to JPG guide.

Built-in tools come first. Most photographers already own an export dialog, and for one photo that is the fastest route. A batch across deliverables is where a dedicated tool earns its price.

See every Mac method compared and the published benchmark for numbers. On 24 small test photos, Smol made JPEGs 69.3% smaller at default settings; your camera files will differ.

• You want pixel-identical output. Smol always re-encodes images and has no lossless mode; ImageOptim is the lossless option.
• You need to retouch, tone, or develop RAW. Smol accepts CR2, NEF, ARW and DNG but does not develop them.
• You process one photo a week. Preview or your editor’s export is faster than opening another app.
• You work on Windows or Linux. Smol runs on macOS only.
• You need exact bytes under a hard cap. Smol sets quality and pixels, so check each file.

Photographers delivering with a watermark or a client gallery host should do that step in the gallery. Smol handles the files before they go there.