Fairsig

How to make an email signature with a photo

A photo makes your emails feel personal, which helps when you are writing to people who don't know you yet. It also has to survive Gmail, Outlook and phone screens. Here is how to pick the photo, size it, host it, and which layout to choose.

When a photo helps (and when it doesn't)

Photos help in relationship work: sales, recruiting, real estate, consulting, freelancing, and anyone meeting email contacts in person later. They add little to internal email, and for large companies a logo usually does the identifying. If you use both, keep the logo small so the two images don't compete.

Choosing the photo

  • Recent and recognisable. People should recognise you when you meet.
  • Head and shoulders, centered, with some space above your head. At 80 pixels, anything wider is too small to see.
  • Plain, light background and even light on your face.
  • Square crop. Templates show it square or round; a square source works for both.

Size and file

Upload a square JPG of about 160–200 pixels; it is displayed at 64–80 pixels and stays sharp on retina screens. That keeps the file around 10–30 KB. Details for every element are on the email signature size page.

Step by step

  1. Crop a recent headshot to a square, head and shoulders, and resize it to about 200 × 200 pixels.
  2. Upload it somewhere public that gives you an https link: your website, your company's CDN or a public image host.
  3. Open the image link in a private browser window to check it loads without signing in.
  4. In the Fairsig generator, open “Photo & logo” and paste the link into Photo URL.
  5. Pick a layout, click Copy signature and paste it into your mail app's signature settings.
  6. Send yourself a test email and open it on a phone and in another mail app.

Hosting tip: the link must end up at the image itself, not at a page showing it. A share link from a cloud drive usually opens a viewer page, which shows as a broken image in email. Links that end in .jpg or .png on your own website are the most reliable.

Five layouts with a photo, compared

The same details in every template that supports a photo. The photos here are placeholder avatars; yours goes in the same place.

Classic: photo beside the details

The photo (80 px) sits left of an accent divider. The most familiar layout, and the safest in Outlook.

Use this signatureClassic template

Modern: round photo under an accent bar

A smaller 64 px photo, vertically centered, with all contacts on one line. Good for short signatures.

Use this signatureModern template

Bold: photo at the end of the header

The name is the hero; the photo sits at the right end of the rule. Works when you also want a large name.

Use this signatureBold template

Centered: photo above the name

Everything centered under a 72 px photo. Looks good on phones, less so next to left-aligned email text.

Use this signatureCentered template

Corporate: photo column with contact band

For company-wide signatures where some people have photos and others use the logo in the same slot.

Use this signatureCorporate template

Photo and logo together

Classic and Modern show the photo beside your details and the logo underneath. Bold, Centered and Corporate show one image: the logo if you set one, otherwise the photo. If your company requires its logo, pick Classic or Modern to keep your photo too.

Questions

Why does my signature photo show as an attachment?

The image was embedded in the email instead of linked. That happens when you paste a picture into the signature editor from your computer. Link the image from a public https URL instead; Fairsig always links images.

Why don't recipients see my photo?

Either the image is not public (a private Google Drive, Dropbox or intranet link only works for you) or the recipient's mail app blocks images until they allow them. Test the link in a private browser window; if it loads there, the second reason is normal and out of your control.

Can I use a round photo?

Fairsig rounds photos with CSS, which most mail apps support. Classic Outlook for Windows ignores rounded corners and shows the photo square, so choose a photo that also looks good square.

See more signatures with photos in the examples gallery, including real estate agents, where a headshot is almost standard.

Ready? The free Fairsig generator builds a signature that works in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, in your browser, with no sign-up. Create your signature with a photo →