6 Tips for Taking a Fabulous — and Realistic — Online Dating Photo When You’re 50+

Save your biggest smile for another time

While smiles are recommended for photos, big, toothy ones can emphasize crow’s feet around the eyes. On Facebook, photographer Renata Cesar suggests a slightly more relaxed smile.

Skip the double chin with a little posing and good posture

If you have a double chin or jowls, push your chin forward, but not up, and pull your shoulders back to tighten the skin on the neck . Cesar calls it “the peach technique” —imagine you’re holding a peach below your chin, which creates more distance from your neck .

Taking photographs from slightly above with the light also coming from above will help thin a double chin and the entire body because your head appears closer to the camera, according to photographer Joe Edelman’s website.

Whatever you do, don’t turn your face to the side, Todd says, because that will emphasize the profile of a double chin. You can turn your body to the side but keep your face looking straight at the camera.

It’s OK to skip your hands in the photo

If you’re worried about aging hands, consider hiding one or both in photos. “A good way to avoid emphasizing your hands is putting one in your pocket or just not having them in the photo,” Todd says.

If you do use retouching, avoid turning yourself into Barbie or Ken

Todd says just because you can, doesn’t mean you should ­ — and you should resist the exaggerated facial features.

If you plan to retouch pics, keep it “under the radar,” Todd advises. “You don’t want to make your lips huge because it won’t look real. You don’t want to tweak your eyes too much or make your skin so soft that you look like a Barbie doll. It should not be the first thing you notice in a photo.”

So what is OK to fix in photographs? Only use filters or retouch photos to eliminate a blemish, brighten a picture or change the background, DeAlto advises.

Nancy Mitchell of Huntington Beach, California, paid about $1,000 to hire a professional photographer to take photos of her in two different outdoor settings that she posted on Elite Singles and Silver Singles.

The photographer edited out a strand of hair blowing across her face and a bra strap but made no drastic changes, Mitchell says. “You want to present yourself as who you really are or you’re wasting your time and the other person’s time,” she adds.

And what if you suspect someone else’s image is a little too fake?

If you think an image is fake, do a reverse image search to see if it appears on other websites or is a stock photo. Save the image to your device, then go to Google Images or Google Lens and click on the multicolored camera icon in the search bar. On some browsers you can right-click or control-click on any image on the internet, then select the option to search for the image. Mitchell says she recently received a message from a dating platform she uses that it was investigating a man’s profile.

“Some shots looked like a professional advertisement,” she says. “It turns out those shots consistently were frauds. They were stock photos with a glowing profile that no woman can resist. You contact them and they won’t meet with you because they’re not even in this country.”

And beware of possible catfishing, when people use fake or stolen photos on dating platforms to steal money or identities in a romance scam, Todd says.

The bottom line: Use common sense, DeAlto advises. “Ask yourself, ‘Does that feel accurate?’” she says. “It’s a lot of gut checks.”