I'm brand new to Headshot (HS) having purchased it just yesterday 06/04/20. So if my questions and comments exhibit maddening ignorance, it's because that's what I am.
1. Why I bought HS. I have this insane idea of using it to create artwork. For example: My college age younger self as college student standing in front of our dormitory. Also, to create book cover images. I've used iC7 this way with semi-satisfactory result but now believe HS is a better option.
2. What I wish. It would be nice to have a wider range of ethnic faces from which to choose. At this time, I plan to explore using vintage photos scanned from albums, what GOOGLE can find, and haunt Goodwill stores and yard sales. It's amazing what old portraits and photos you can find from time to time.
Including 1920-1940 era movie stars and other known and unknown people. I may have to look into the legality of using some.
3. Helping my wife. I expect to also create image ideas for my artist wife who is a pyrographic artist. Her work is mostly close up work showing of western in various common activities and scenes.
4. A question. Has anyone else tried or thought of using HS in the manner described above? I know RL folks are animation focused. I also know you're very creative, so....



Omen HP17t ck00 -- Windows 11 -- 32GB RAM -- Two 1TB Crucial M.2 NVME Drives -- nVidia Geoforce RTX 3070 -- 11th Generation i9 -- LG 32" QUHD Monitor

Hello,

I'm not 100% certain what you're trying to achieve, but it sounds interesting. I have experimented with older movie stars like Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, although I used a resin bust as a Headshot reference. If you have any specific questions about the Headshot process I can try to answer them.

This image which popped up during a search of vampires, is this your work?
https://dailydead.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Bela-Lugosi-bust-620.jpg

Whether it is or not, would like to see your Headshot efforts from using an actual photo like this one.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/2b/c8/c4/2bc8c4c31233ff147f25142bbb570737.jpg
I'm referring to using actual photos of vintage subjects to avoid copyright or likeness images of contemporary people.


Omen HP17t ck00 -- Windows 11 -- 32GB RAM -- Two 1TB Crucial M.2 NVME Drives -- nVidia Geoforce RTX 3070 -- 11th Generation i9 -- LG 32" QUHD Monitor

No, but my work is probably based on the same resin bust.



The reason I chose the bust over the photo is because low resolution photos produce low quality results in Headshot, and a black and white photo is going to produce a black and white result (whereas with color you can make it black and white if you wish, using a filter).

I probably wouldn't attempt a Headshot project with anything under 450 pixels in width, unless the image was very crisp.

If you're looking for an unlimited resource of free, decent-resolution photos, you find AI generated faces here:
https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

You should never run into a copyright issue, the photos are generally crisp, and they person doesn't exist. Just keep refreshing it to get the photos you want.

For those who wonder if black and white photos can be used for headshots, yes they can. The sample I'm including here was solely to see if I could use HS to put a face on an avatar. I made no attempt to refine anything about the face as my aim was to see if it could be done. First, I took the original image into Corel Paintshop Pro. I sepia it then used its photo enhancer to get a sort of hue of the subject's skin tone. No, it wasn't as good as I'd like, but it was a quickie "can it be done thing." Here are the b/w, modified, and HS result. As stated originally, I'm only interested in creating models for my wife's artwork and sometimes my own as book cover work.






Omen HP17t ck00 -- Windows 11 -- 32GB RAM -- Two 1TB Crucial M.2 NVME Drives -- nVidia Geoforce RTX 3070 -- 11th Generation i9 -- LG 32" QUHD Monitor

Nice work. Did you do any skin tone enhancements in CC or HS?

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

Nice work, seems like a good result.

None whatsoever. I was surprised the avatar's skin tone came out as well as it did. This was a purely "what if" venture. I look forward to further experimenting with the b/w photos idea. I will be trying it with other ethnic groups.  I will also fool around with faces I make with FaceGen saved as png or jpg, and see what HS will do with those. Coming back to your question, I'm pretty sure if I put in the work to refine face and skin tone, HS would do a credible job. After I'm done experimenting, I'll hit on the tutorials for doing more refined work, which I know my wife would appreciate.


Omen HP17t ck00 -- Windows 11 -- 32GB RAM -- Two 1TB Crucial M.2 NVME Drives -- nVidia Geoforce RTX 3070 -- 11th Generation i9 -- LG 32" QUHD Monitor

OK, this is another quickie, "What If" experiment. I selected the most inferior B/W image I have. I opened it in Paintshop Pro (PSP), sepia it, then used its enhancement, image adjustments sliders to further incorporate skin hue. I couldn't really get rid of the white patches which I think are from the photographer's lighting lamps. Still, I got a fair rendition that allowed HS to make a  go at an avatar using the photo. Here I show the original pic, the modified pic, and HS result. And this concludes my posting these experiments, which answered my own question. HS can indeed use faces from B/W photos with some help. The quality you get depends on, of course the quality of the photo and how much effort you want to put in things like coloring the mask, painting the photo etc. I did none of these things beyond using the sliders in PSP to modify it enough for HS to work with. Also, HS will use the modified face coloring to give the avatar body a skin tone which again, I made no effort to modify. Please forgive the size of the last pic, I tried to shrink it down as I did the first two and it still uploads as a bandwidth hog. But in a nutshell for those like me who want to know if B/W photos can be used, again, yes. Further, though I won't be posting any additional experiments, I'm 100 certain one can use color illustration images as well. Such as a Norman Rockwell character, or something like: https://i.insider.com/4df662b2cadcbbd3030d0000?width=1200

   


Omen HP17t ck00 -- Windows 11 -- 32GB RAM -- Two 1TB Crucial M.2 NVME Drives -- nVidia Geoforce RTX 3070 -- 11th Generation i9 -- LG 32" QUHD Monitor