Providing Staff Photos for the Halo Sign-in System

There is an option on your Halo Sign-in System to include images of Safeguarding or Health & Safety Officers, along with a message for all visitors to see when they sign in. In order for this page to appear as professional as possible, we ask that you follow some guidelines when supplying photos, which can be found below.

We also ask that you follow the same guidance when supplying images for Staff ID Cards with photos.

Please note: Due to the quantity of photos supplied for ID Cards, we will not be able to offer AI Image enhancement for ID Card images.

1. Suitable photo types

While you’re not applying for a new passport with these photos, it is a good idea to follow some basic steps to ensure they look professional. Below are some examples of suitable photos.

Professional portrait of a woman with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a gray blazer, white blouse, pearl necklace, and pearl earrings, smiling against a blue gradient background.
Portrait of a young woman with wavy brown hair smiling outdoors, with a playground and trees in the background.

School Photo day photo

Portrait of a young man with short brown hair wearing a light blue dress shirt with a pin of a book on the left chest, neutral expression, standing against a plain beige background.

Relaxed but professional

Passport Style Photo

2. Unsuitable photo types

3. How to get good photos

Below are some examples of photos that we would advise aren’t suitable for use for this function.

A young woman with long, wavy brown hair taking a selfie in a lively bar or restaurant with warm lighting and blurred patrons in the background.

Unprofessional location and “Selfie” style photo

A smiling man with short dark hair, wearing a white T-shirt, standing outdoors near a large tree, with sunlight filtering through the leaves.

Cut out of a group photo

A man with graying hair and a serious expression, wearing a dark suit and white shirt, sitting in a professional setting.

Very low resolution image

A smiling woman with shoulder-length brown hair wearing a dark green blazer and a white blouse, standing against a blue background.

Watermarked image

We understand that not everyone will have a professional or “corporate” style headshot of themselves, but here are some easy things you can do to get one.

  • Request your full quality photo from your School Photography company.

  • Ask someone to take your photo with any modern smartphone in a well-lit area and on a plain background.

  • Request that someone take your photo with a modern digital camera

4. AI Enhancement of images

Sometimes we may receive perfectly good photos but they are low quality or would benefit from a resolution increase. With the subjects permission we may offer to “upscale” these images with the use of AI platforms. Before we do this we will follow these strict steps:

  1. Email the school and ask if the subject would like to submit a different photo

  2. If they don’t want to supply a different photo, do they give us permission to attempt to enhance the image with the use of an AI platform? If they don’t want us to enhance the image, we will then use the supplied photo as is.

  3. If they do give us permission to use AI to attempt to improve the image, we will attempt to do so with strict parameters not to alter the appearance of the person in the photo. For more information, please refer to our “Master Prompt” below that we use as a base for this task.

  4. Once we have generated an image (or images) we are happy with, we will submit it/them to the school so that they can get approval from the subject. If they approve an image, we will use it; if they don’t approve an image, we can revert back to the original.

Any requests made during this process will be made through the school email address or directly with the individual in question. If we make the request through the school email address, any approvals we receive will be taken in good faith and under the assumption that the member of staff has been spoken to and permission has been received.

An important note about uploading images to AI Platforms

As an organisation we pay for a Google Workspace License and therefor, data we store on Drive, Gmail or use with other core services like Gemini are governed by Google’s Data Handling Policies. Gemini’s Policy states that “Prompts and generated content in Gemini for Workspace do not train or improve the underlying AI models that power Google services” meaning that your images will remain secure and aren’t used by Google for other purposes.

  1. If the image in question is public on the internet through your own social media or the school website, for example, there is a chance that the image has already been “scraped” by an AI platform already.

  2. We only use Google Gemini for the purpose of image enhancement, and Google’s own policy states: “Your chats aren’t used to improve our models”, which means that data we share is not used to train Google Gemini itself.

Please consider this information as part of your decision on whether or not to approve the use of AI to improve your image.

Our current “Master Prompt” starting point for image enhancement

“You are an expert in photo enhancement and restoration.

I will provide an image of a person that will be used on a staff information screen.

Your task is to improve the overall image quality - make it clearer, sharper, and more detailed - so that it looks like it was taken on a modern DSLR camera.

Important rules:

  • Do not alter or modify the person’s appearance in any way.

  • Do not change facial features, expressions, or proportions.

  • Maintain the person’s natural skin tone - avoid any airbrushing, smoothing, or artificial lighting effects.

  • Do not add or remove background elements unless I explicitly ask.

Your focus should be on improving clarity, detail, and lighting realism while preserving the subject’s authentic look.”

This prompt is subject to change in order to achieve the best results. If we alter the prompt we use, we will update it here. We may also add additional prompts to fine-tune the results as needed.

All images on this page were generated by Google Gemini AI and any resemblance to other people is purely coincidental. No images of real people were uploaded by us as references to create these images.