Let Casting Download a Print Resolution Copy of Your Headshot
You can now mark individual photographs as downloadable. A small download control appears on those images, and clicking it delivers the full resolution original rather than the web-sized copy.
The problem this solves
Somebody needs your headshot at print size. A festival needs it for the program. A theater needs it for the lobby board. A journalist needs it for a piece running on Thursday. Previously this was an email exchange, at minimum a day, and often on a deadline you did not know about.
Now it is a link you already gave them.
Why it is per-image rather than site-wide
Because you almost certainly do not want every photograph on your site downloadable at full size. Production stills often belong to the production. Photographer-shot images carry a license that may not include third party redistribution. And a set of full resolution files is exactly what somebody scraping images for a fake profile is looking for.
Marking one or two images as downloadable is a deliberate decision about a specific photograph. That is the right granularity.
What gets delivered
The original file you uploaded, unmodified, at whatever resolution your photographer supplied. Not an upscale, not a re-encode. If you uploaded a 6000 pixel wide TIFF, that is what arrives. This is another reason not to compress before uploading, as covered in automatic image resizing.
Credit your photographer
The caption field on a downloadable image is shown next to the download control. Put the photographer's name in it. Most headshot licenses require credit on publication, most actors forget, and this is the one place where the person publishing it will actually see the requirement.
What else to make available
A downloadable headshot pairs naturally with a downloadable resume, covered in uploading a PDF resume, and eventually with a single page holding both, which is where press kit pages are going. Our older piece on the benefits of a downloadable resume makes the general argument: anything a professional might need from you should be one click away, not one email away.
Related: lightbox viewing explains why the viewer deliberately does not serve originals by default.
Create a free actor website and put your headshot somewhere people can actually get it.
