AI Yearbook Photo

How to make an AI yearbook photo from a selfie

To make AI yearbook photos from a selfie, upload one close-up to AI Yearbook Photo and pick a decade: 70s, 80s, 90s or Y2K. Each run costs 1 photo and returns one posed picture-day portrait on that decade's studio backdrop (mottled canvas, laser beams or a blue gradient), with its hair styling, makeup and clothes. Your face and your real age stay as they are. It runs on every plan, and a new account starts with 3 free photos.

1. 1Pick a daylight close-up with your face toward the lens. Glasses you wear in it are kept, frames and all; nobody gets glasses added.
2. 2Set Decade. The 90s is preselected; 70s, 80s and Y2K each bring their own backdrop and print color.
3. 3Press Create (1 photo). For a four-decade set, run the same selfie once per decade, so the decade is the only setting you change between the four.

How is the portrait posed and lit, and what stays from your selfie?

The pose copies a school photographer's: shoulders turned about 30 degrees, head turned back to the lens, chin a touch down, framed to mid-chest with no hands in view. The light is a soft umbrella flash from one side, a hair light that leaves a glow on the hair and shoulders, and a brighter halo on the backdrop behind the head. It finishes as a scanned print with fine grain and the decade's film color.

From your selfie it keeps hair color, texture, hairline and roughly the length; only the cut and styling come from the decade. Very short or shaved hair stays as it is, and the era shows in the clothes, backdrop and print instead. Stubble or a beard stays, a clean-shaven face stays clean-shaven, and men get no makeup.

What can you use it for?

• Your take on the AI yearbook trend, in the decade you finished school or one you missed.
• A four-slide carousel: the same face shot in the 70s, 80s, 90s and Y2K.
• A class reunion slideshow where each classmate sends in a portrait made from their own selfie.

What does an example run look like?

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  AI-generated sample input

  

  Result

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  AI-generated sample input

  

  Result

Which selfie makes the best yearbook portrait?

• Smile the way you want to look on picture day. The expression is copied from the selfie and made only a little friendlier: closed lips stay closed, and teeth appear only when they show in your photo.
• For the 90s curtains on a man, the hair on top must fall at least halfway down the forehead when combed forward. Shorter hair keeps its cut with a little gel at the front.
• Expect the women's decade makeup and powder to smooth skin a little. In our runs freckles, fine lines and face shape still came through.
• The 70s print has a faint amber cast by design; our ash-brown test hair stayed light brown under it, not copper.

What goes wrong most often?

• Wearing a team jersey or a logo tee and hoping it shows. The template dresses you in the decade's clothes, with no crests, varsity letters, mascots or brand marks.
• Looking for a casual snapshot of the era. This is the posed studio portrait; for a 1985 street or bedroom shot, try You in the 80s.