Choose Your Lead Photo at Thumbnail Size

After a shoot you have a folder of good photos and one obvious favorite. The favorite is often the wrong photo to lead with. This step shows how to choose, and what to do with the rest.

Photo: “First contact sheet” by brenkee, CC0.

The problem with the favorite

You choose on a laptop, full screen, remembering how the day felt. Almost nobody else will see the photo that way. They will see it in a lineup post, in an email preview, as a circle beside a track name.

The wide, atmospheric shot you love usually turns into a dark shape at that size.

The test

1. Put your five or six best candidates side by side.
2. Shrink the view until each one is about as wide as your thumb. On a phone, the gallery grid does this for you.
3. Step back or squint.
4. Keep the one where you can still tell there is a person, where the face is, and what the mood is.

That photo leads. It is usually tighter and simpler, with one clear shape against a calm background.

Choose the lead photo at the size it will be seen, before you choose it at the size you love.

Give every photo a job

Keep the favorite and move it to a place where it has room.

• Lead: profile pictures, lineup graphics, press requests. The same one everywhere.
• Wide: website header, banners, the inside of your press kit.
• Vertical: stories, posters.
• Action or detail: posts between releases.

Using the same lead everywhere can feel repetitive to you. To everyone else it is how a face becomes familiar.

Sort the folder

Make four subfolders with those names and move each final photo into one. Delete nothing, just separate the selected from the rest. When someone asks for “a photo”, you send the lead without thinking.

How long to keep it

Keep the lead until the project changes in a way people can hear. A new release cycle or a clear change in sound is a reason to update it. Being tired of it is not, as you will see in step 29.

Do this now

Run the thumbnail test on your current photos and set the winner as your profile picture on every platform today.

Deciding which images lead and where each one goes is part of the direction we give for an artist’s profiles and press material. See our work with artists.