The four questions that replace a sample gallery

For a company, comparing output is close to useless. Every product in this category clears the bar on an easy face, which is what galleries contain.

Question one: the fourteen-month test

Can you add one person a year from now and have their headshot match? If it requires organising anything, it will not happen, and the set starts drifting the day it is finished.

Question two: retention as a number

Not a paragraph about caring. A figure. Its absence is the answer.

Question three: the opt-out

Can employees decline without it being awkward? This stalls more rollouts than price does, and only the employer can make the answer true.

Question four: batch time

It decides whether the rollout fits inside the window during which people are still willing to participate.

What stays constant whatever you buy

A team portrait set works when the crop, background and light direction are identical across everyone. That is true of any vendor and of a photographer.

What to test rather than read

The two hardest faces in the company — very dark hair, strong prescription glasses — through each candidate's free tier. Products differ most exactly where galleries never look.