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Professional headshots have long been one of those small but stubborn line items on a business owner's to-do list. Scheduling a photographer, renting a studio, coordinating half a dozen employees to show up on the same day in matching attire, it adds up in time and money, and for many small and mid-sized companies across the Region, it simply never gets done. Team pages go stale. LinkedIn profiles carry photos from two jobs ago. Websites look a half-step behind.
The Times of Northwest Indiana (NWI) is stepping in to help solve that problem. Starting this week, the newspaper is launching a new AI headshot generator built specifically for Northwest Indiana businesses, giving local companies a fast, affordable way to produce studio-quality portraits for their entire team without ever leaving the office.
The tool is the product of a partnership with OnBrand, a San Francisco based enterprise visual identity platform that counts 5% of the Fortune 500 among its users. OnBrand powers the underlying technology, while NWI is making it available to its regional business community through a branded portal tailored to local companies.
How It Works
The process is built to be as simple as possible for a business owner who does not have time to learn new software. Employees upload a handful of selfies from their phone, choose from a library of professional backdrops and wardrobe styles, and receive a set of finished headshots within minutes. The output is high resolution, ready to drop into a website, email signature, LinkedIn profile, or printed marketing material.
For larger teams, administrators can manage the whole process from a single dashboard. They invite employees by email, track who has completed their shoot, and download the final images in bulk. The tool also includes brand consistency features that keep backgrounds, framing, and color palettes uniform across the entire team, so a 40-person company ends up with 40 photos that actually look like they belong on the same website.
That last piece, brand consistency, is what separates the enterprise grade product from the consumer apps that have flooded the market over the past two years. Many of those tools can produce a flattering portrait of one person. Very few can produce 40 portraits that feel cohesive.
Why It Matters Locally
Northwest Indiana is home to thousands of small and mid-sized businesses, from law firms and accounting practices to real estate brokerages, medical groups, and construction companies. Some of them rely on professional imagery to win trust with clients. And some of them run into the same friction when it comes time to actually produce that imagery.
A traditional professional headshot session in the region typically runs $200 to $400 per person, before travel and coordination costs. A company with 30 employees is looking at an easy $10,000 bill, plus a full day of lost productivity. For many owners, that math is a non-starter, which is why some local businesses end up with a patchwork of mismatched photos, phone snapshots, and empty placeholder silhouettes on their team pages.
The new tool is priced to put polished headshots within reach of even the smallest firms. A single employee headshot package starts well below the cost of a traditional session, and volume pricing for teams brings the per person cost down further. Companies can roll new hires through the system as they join, rather than waiting to batch up annual photo days.
The OnBrand Partnership
OnBrand, which operates at onbrandhq.ai, has been building enterprise visual identity infrastructure for several years. The company's platform powers headshot generation, brand compliance scoring, and automated photo delivery for large organizations, including a long running deployment with a Fortune 500 company that serves tax professionals across its more than 20,000 expert network.
"Local businesses have been underserved by the first wave of AI photo tools," said a AJ Agrawal from OnBrand. "Consumer apps are great for individuals, but the moment you try to do this across a team, the quality falls apart. We built our platform to solve that at enterprise scale, and the partnership with NWI puts that same technology into the hands of companies right here in the Region."
For NWI, the launch represents a broader effort to expand the services it offers to the regional business community beyond traditional advertising and classifieds. Newspapers across the country are rethinking their role as local business partners, and tools like this one point toward a future where a trusted local media brand is also a trusted local service provider.
Practical Use Cases
Early users of the platform include a Munster based law firm updating its attorney roster, a Crown Point accounting practice preparing for tax season, and a Valparaiso real estate brokerage refreshing its agent directory ahead of the spring market. Each saw completed headshots for their entire team delivered within a single business day.
The tool is also being used for more granular applications. Companies are generating headshots optimized specifically for LinkedIn, where square cropping and certain background choices tend to perform better in feed. Others are producing photos formatted for Google Business Profile listings, which research suggests can increase click through rates on local search results.
Data and Privacy
One of the most common questions about AI generated headshots is what happens to the source photos employees upload. The platform is built with enterprise privacy standards. Input photos are used only to generate the requested headshots and are deleted on a rolling schedule. Companies retain full commercial rights to the finished images and can use them however they choose, including on printed materials, websites, and third-party platforms.
Looking Ahead
The rollout begins this week and will expand over the coming months to include additional features such as team directory integration, automated refresh reminders when photos age past a set threshold, and formatting tools for common business applications like email signatures and social media banners.
Local business owners interested in getting started can access the tool through a dedicated portal on nwitimes.com. Early adopters will receive introductory pricing through the first ninety days of the launch.
For a region built on the strength of its local businesses, the promise is straightforward. A Northwest Indiana company should be able to look every bit as polished online as a Fortune 500 firm, and it should not take a five-figure budget to get there.
