What resolution and size do my final photos need to be?
When your photographer supplies you with your retouched headshots, each image should come in two resolutions - high resolution and low resolution.
Photos are made up of pixels - a photo in high resolution has more information (more pixels) in it than one in low resolution and that means is it’s a larger file size (in terms of megabytes).
You don’t need to worry too much about understanding file size but what is important is that you use the right resolution photos for the right purposes. A high res photo should be used for printing and a low res photo should be used for anything online. It’s important to get this right because if you try to print a low res image it won’t have sufficient information and will look terrible as a print. In fact most printers won’t even try to print a low res image, they’ll just let you know you’ve supplied them with an image of incorrect resolution for printing.
Conversely if you try to put a high resolution photo on Spotlight, Facebook, Mandy etc the photo may well upload but won’t look it’s best. The upload facility on the website will have compressed the photo so that it’s the right resolution but in doing so the colours and contrast of the photo will be affected and it could look dull and washed out.
Your photographer will have used professional software to make sure each retouched image is sized correctly for either print or web, so just make sure you use the correct one for whatever you’re doing.