Size, Format and What The Casting Site Actually Wants

Stop thinking in DPI. It is doing nothing.

“Your headshot must be 300 DPI” is the most repeated and most useless sentence in actor-headshot advice. It appears in every guide, on every photographer’s FAQ, in every forum answer. Here is what is actually true.

A digital image has exactly one property that determines how much detail it contains: its pixel dimensions. 2400 x 3000. That is the entire truth about how much picture you have.

DPI — properly PPI — is a single number sitting in the file’s metadata header. It is an instruction to a printer. It says: “when you print me, put this many of my pixels into each inch of paper.” That is all it does. It does nothing else, anywhere, ever.

So: a 2400 x 3000 file tagged “300 DPI” and the identical 2400 x 3000 file tagged “72 DPI” are the same image. Same pixels. Same quality. Byte for byte identical on every screen on earth. Open one in Photoshop, uncheck Resample, change 72 to 300, save — and the file size will not move by a single byte, because nothing happened.

Casting directors look at your headshot on a monitor or a phone. On a screen, DPI is meaningless.

And here is the part that should end the argument permanently. Not one platform — not Actors Access, not Casting Networks, not Backstage, not Mandy, not Spotlight, not Casting Frontier — specifies a DPI requirement. Not one of them. Every DPI claim in the actor-advice ecosystem is downstream of somebody’s photographer saying it in 2009. The specific claim that “Spotlight requires 72 DPI” is stale and should be killed on sight — it is not on either current Spotlight page, and it still surfaces in search snippets.

When does DPI matter? When you hand a file to a printer at a fixed physical size. Send a 600 x 750 pixel file to a lab and ask for an 8x10 and you will get 75 pixels per inch and it will look like porridge. But that is not a DPI problem. It is a pixel-count problem, and the fix is “send more pixels,” not “set the DPI to 300.”

What the platforms actually publish

Every figure below was taken from the platform’s own live help page on 14 July 2026. Where a platform does not publish something, we say so rather than guessing — which is, disappointingly, the rarest thing on this page.

Actors Access / Breakdown Services. The only dimension figure Breakdown Services publishes anywhere is this, verbatim: “The optimal size for the photo is 500 x 700 pixels.” That is a 5:7 ratio. No minimum, no maximum, no file-size limit and no accepted-file-type list is published. Anything you have read claiming “Actors Access: 1MB limit, JPG only” is not on any Actors Access page. It may be silently enforced at upload. It is not documented, and we are not going to pretend it is.

Casting Networks. Verbatim: “The maximum image file size is 30 MB and photos should be a minimum of 360 x 360px.” File types: jpg, jpe, jpeg, png, gif. Note that 360 x 360 is a square minimum — and note how far it is from the “1200 x 1600 minimum” that circulates everywhere.

Backstage (and Mandy, and StarNow — they now share one help centre and one Media Locker). Verbatim: “The Media Locker can host images of JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats… Images have a maximum file size of 100 MB.” No minimum dimension is stated at all. The widely-repeated “Backstage: minimum 800 x 1000, maximum 5MB, 4:5” is contradicted by Backstage’s own current page on every count.

Spotlight (UK). Verbatim: “At least 500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall” and “At least 1MB and no more than 40MB.” Note the unusual one there — Spotlight has a minimum file size of 1MB, which is the opposite of what everybody assumes and will catch out anyone who compresses their file to be helpful.

Casting Frontier. Recommends roughly 1000 pixels on the short edge, with an in-browser crop step. Its maximum file size is not published — despite the platform maintaining an entire help article about files being too large. We looked. It isn’t there.

Mandy has no separate published specs. The old mandy.com FAQ pages are dead and redirect to Backstage’s help centre. Any “Mandy requires 350 x 438px” you find is quoting a page that no longer exists.

The casting-facing image on Backstage is a SQUARE

This is the single most under-taught fact in this entire section, and Backstage states it in plain text on their own help page.

Read it again. The first image a casting director sees when your application lands is a 1:1 square that you can crop yourself — hiding inside a platform everyone assumes wants a 4:5.

And now the arithmetic, which is where it costs you. Going from a 4:5 master to a 1:1 square, you lose 20% of the height. Headshot composition puts the head high in the frame — eyes on the upper third — so a naive centre-crop takes that 20% off the top and the bottom, and chops either the top of your skull or your chin.

Remember what the agent Lisa Berman said she was scanning for: “full heads (not cut off at top of head).” The platform will cut your head off if you let it. Go and look at your square thumbnail right now.

Actors Access keeps two images, and you control the crop of the one that matters

Almost nobody teaches this and it takes thirty seconds to fix.

Breakdown Services’ own photo-management article describes the upload flow, and there are three steps. You upload. Then there is “View Printable” — described as “a full-resolution version that gets printed onto a full page.” And then there is a “Thumbnail Editor” — described, verbatim, as producing “a smaller version of the photo that Casting will see first when reviewing submissions” — with zoom and rotate sliders and the instruction to “drag the picture around to frame it within the dotted lines.”

So Actors Access stores a full-resolution printable AND a separately-cropped thumbnail — and the actor controls the thumbnail crop. If you skip that step, an automatic crop decides how casting sees you. The image the industry actually looks at is the one you didn’t bother to frame.

One thing we could not verify: the exact aspect ratio of that thumbnail frame. The help article shows a screenshot but states no ratio in text, and we are not going to guess a number for you. What matters is that the crop exists, it is yours, and it is the one casting sees first. Go and set it.

4:5 is a print norm, not a platform norm

Four corrections, all of them load-bearing.

One: not a single platform requires 4:5. It is the ratio of an 8x10 print. It came from paper. Two: nothing has moved to 2:3 — we found no evidence for that claim anywhere, and it circulates. Three: 8x10 and 5x7 are not the same crop. 8x10 is 4:5, which is 0.80. 5x7 is 5:7, which is 0.714. 5:7 is narrower, and Actors Access’s only published guidance — “optimal 500 x 700” — is a 5:7. Four: 1:1 is real and badly under-taught. Backstage says the square thumbnail is what casting sees. Spotlight says you will be viewed “in a grid format.” Actors Access maintains a dedicated thumbnail editor. The industry’s actual first-impression unit is a small square-ish tile, not an 8x10.

Which gives you the correct workflow, and it is the opposite of what most actors do:

Keep one generous 4:5 master at 2400 x 3000 or better. Then build each platform’s crop by hand, from that master, one at a time. Never upload an already-tightly-cropped file — because every platform is going to crop it again, and if you have given it no room, it will take the room out of your head.

sRGB: the one common claim that is right, but for the wrong reason

Upload sRGB. Not Adobe RGB, not ProPhoto, and never CMYK. That much of the folklore is correct.

The reason usually given — “because the platforms require it” — is not. No platform specifies a colour space. The real reason is browsers: a browser assumes sRGB when it ignores an embedded profile, so an Adobe RGB file renders desaturated and flat on a casting director’s screen, and a CMYK JPEG can come out with inverted or garbled colour, or be rejected outright.

The photo labs want the same thing. Fuji Frontier and Noritsu machines — which is what the headshot reproduction houses run — want sRGB JPEGs. CMYK is for offset presses, and the lab handles that conversion itself. So sRGB is right for the upload and right for the print, and it is a colour-management fact, not a rule. Saying it that way is more accurate, and it tells you what to do when you meet a case nobody wrote a rule for.

The printed 8x10 is not dead. It is a theatre artefact.

Both halves of this matter and most guides get one of them wrong.

In screen casting the printed 8x10 is finished. US film, TV and commercial casting is 100% digital, through Actors Access, Casting Networks and Casting Frontier. Nobody hands a casting director a print in a self-tape era. The UK is digital essentially everywhere — Spotlight is a digital platform, and UK screen and most UK theatre run on Spotlight profiles and PDFs.

In American live theatre it is alive and specifically demanded in 2026. Actors’ Equity Association’s own official guidance to producers on writing a casting-call notice says, verbatim, under Preparation: “We recommend reminding performers to bring a picture/resume stapled together.” And the same page notes that as of 2 January 2023, all required Equity auditions take place in person again. In person means physical materials.

An important precision, because everyone overstates this. The actual AEA Principal Auditions procedures document — still the linked PDF in 2026, revised 5/19/17 — covers sign-up, appointments, alternate lists, meal breaks and monitors, and does not mention headshots or resumes at all. So bringing a picture and resume to an EPA is convention plus producer instruction, not an Equity procedural requirement. Do not let anyone tell you “Equity requires an 8x10.” Equity recommends that producers ask for one — and producers overwhelmingly do. Florida Repertory Theatre’s June 2026 NYC Equity call asked for “a head shot & resume stapled together.” So did Adirondack, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Center Theatre Group, Cortland Rep and Theatre Calgary.

The honest framing: a screen-only actor may never print a headshot in their life. Anyone doing US stage work needs a stack.

If you are printing: the actual spec

From Beaupix Studio in Boston, one of the reproduction houses, on their actively maintained resource page — and this is the only place anyone states it plainly:

The rest of their spec: medium to heavy paper stock, 165 gsm or heavier, and a semi-matte, luster or matte surface. Their stated reason for avoiding gloss is functional, not aesthetic: “Glossy surface looks good when framed, but they will show fingerprints and scratches more easily” — and a stack of headshots gets handled, passed around and put down on tables all day. Border or no border is your choice, but always put your name on the print, bottom centre or corner. And because office paper is 8.5 x 11, your resume has to be trimmed to 8x10 before you staple it to the back. That is where the whole stapling convention comes from.

Glossy or matte: no governing body rules on this and nobody has ever been cut for using glossy. The practitioner consensus is matte, semi-matte or luster, and the reason is fingerprints. Treat it as a soft convention with a practical rationale, which is exactly what it is.

Reproduction runs about $0.70 to $0.90 a print in bulk — roughly $90 for 100 prints.

The specs to kill on sight

Every one of these circulates widely. Every one is wrong, and you can now say why.

“Actors Access: 100KB–2MB, JPG only.” Not on any Actors Access page. “Backstage: minimum 800 x 1000, maximum 5MB, 4:5.” Contradicted — 100MB, JPEG/PNG/GIF, no minimum stated. “Casting Networks: 1200 x 1600 to 2000 x 2500, 300KB–2MB.” Contradicted — 360 x 360 minimum, 30MB maximum. “Spotlight requires 72 DPI.” Gone from the current pages. “Your headshot must be 300 DPI.” No platform says this. “8x10 and 5x7 are the same crop.” False.

And the last one, which is half true and worth getting exactly right. “You must name your file FirstnameLastname.jpg — the platforms require it.” No platform requires it. Not Actors Access, not Casting Networks, not Backstage, not Spotlight, not Casting Frontier. But the convention is real and it belongs to email: when you send a headshot to a casting director or a theatre directly, FirstnameLastname_Headshot.jpg is basic hygiene, because IMG_4471.jpg lands in an inbox and dies there. That is a good habit. It is not a platform rule, and the difference matters.