A headshot is a tightly cropped photo of the face and shoulders, made for a specific professional purpose like a LinkedIn profile, staff directory, or ID badge. A portrait is a broader photographic genre that can include the full body, environmental context, and creative lighting, made to express character rather than serve one narrow, practical use.
Headshot
A headshot is defined by its job, not its style. The framing is consistent — head and shoulders, camera near eye level — because the photo needs to work at a small size: a directory thumbnail, a circular profile icon, a name badge. Lighting is even and unobtrusive so the face reads clearly rather than dramatically. See what head-and-shoulders framing actually specifies.
Portrait
A portrait is defined by its intent to capture something about the subject beyond identification — mood, environment, personality. It can be full-body, off-center, shot in hard directional light, or set somewhere meaningful to the subject. None of that would work for a directory photo, and none of it is required to.
Where the categories overlap
Every headshot is technically a portrait, but not every portrait is a headshot. A headshot is the narrow, purpose-built subset: one framing convention, one lighting philosophy, optimized for a specific practical outcome rather than artistic range.
Which one you need
If the photo has a job — LinkedIn, a resume, a company bio page — you need a headshot, and the framing and lighting conventions exist for a reason. Browse AI headshots built around exactly that brief, or see the range of finished looks in the gallery.