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Add a professional headshot to your email signature. Best size, shape, and hosting practices so your photo renders in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
Create your signatureRe: What it is
It is a signature layout that pairs a small professional headshot with your name, title, and contact details, usually with the photo in a left column and text beside it. Recruiters, salespeople, consultants, and anyone whose work is relationship-driven benefit most, since a face makes an email feel like it came from a person rather than a system. The photo lives on a CDN or web server and is referenced by URL, because email clients do not reliably display embedded or attached images. Shape matters too: if you want a circular photo, crop it into a circle before uploading, since Outlook ignores the CSS that would round it.
Re: How it works
Step 1
Pick a well-lit photo with a plain background, crop it square or circular, and export a PNG or JPEG at 160 to 200 pixels while keeping the file under 200KB. Upload it to a public HTTPS location.
Step 2
Open BrandFooter's free generator and select a template that places a headshot beside the contact block. The two-column table keeps photo and text aligned in every client.
Step 3
Enter your details, paste the hosted image URL into the photo field, and set alt text to your name. The preview shows the photo at its display size of roughly 80 to 100 pixels.
Step 4
Click Copy HTML and paste the signature into Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail settings. Send a test email and confirm the photo loads and stays crisp on a phone and a desktop.
Re: Why it works
Key benefits of adding a photo to your email signature.
Re: Doing it well
Best practices to get the most out of this feature.
Re: Common questions
Common questions about a photo in email signatures.
Display it at 80 to 100 pixels square next to your contact details, and export the source file at roughly double that for sharpness on retina screens. Set explicit width and height attributes in the HTML so no client scales it unexpectedly, and keep the file comfortably under 200KB.
Crop it round before you upload. Outlook desktop renders email with the Word engine, which ignores border-radius, so CSS rounding fails there even though it works in Gmail and Apple Mail. A PNG cropped into a circle with a transparent or white corner area displays as a circle everywhere.
They do different jobs, and many signatures carry both. The headshot builds personal recognition, which suits sales, recruiting, and consulting, while the logo reinforces the company brand. If space forces a choice, client-facing individuals usually gain more from the face, and generic team inboxes from the logo.
Check three things: the photo must sit at a publicly reachable HTTPS URL, not a local file path or a private drive link; the URL must load in an incognito browser window; and the recipient may have remote images blocked, which is why alt text with your name matters as the fallback.
Not meaningfully, because the photo is linked rather than embedded. The HTML carries only a URL, a few dozen bytes, and the image downloads when the message is opened. A single reasonably compressed headshot from a reputable HTTPS host has no notable effect on deliverability.
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Create a signature with a professional photo in minutes. Free generator, no account needed, and the HTML renders cleanly in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.
Create your signature