How Many Photos Can You Add to Plenty of Fish?

Plenty of Fish lets you add up to 8 photos, and that count includes your main image. An upgraded membership raises the limit to 16. The main image has a rule of its own: it has to show your face clearly, with nothing in the way and nobody else in it.

A standard account has room for 8 photos, main image included. Upgrade your membership and the room grows to 16.

The number that matters to her is smaller than either. She looks at your main image, decides whether to keep going, and if she does, she flicks through a few more. Plenty of women will never reach your twelfth photo, and the ones who do are already deciding whether to write back.

So the real question is not how many you can add. It is how many good ones you have.

POF's guidelines ask for a main image that gives a clear, unobstructed view of your face, with no other people in it. Sunglasses over your eyes, a cap pulled low, a shot from across the room and a photo with friends all work against that rule.

The rule happens to match what works. Your main image has one job, which is letting her see who you are in a second. A group shot makes her guess which one is you, and most women will not bother guessing. A photo taken from too far away makes her squint. A dim bar photo hides the face she was trying to see.

Pick one taken in daylight, from about the chest up, where you look relaxed and you are the only person in it.

POF accepts jpg, jpeg, bmp, gif and PNG files. Each one has to be between 100kB and 5MB, and at least 400 x 400 pixels.

When an upload fails, it is usually one of three things. A photo saved from a chat app, or a screenshot of a photo, is often squeezed down too small. A photo cropped hard to cut out an ex or a friend can end up under 400 x 400. And a large file straight off a new phone can go over 5MB.

Upload the original where you can, crop gently, and save a smaller copy if the file is too big.

A woman does not add up your photos. She judges the set as a whole, and one weak photo in the middle drags the good ones down with it.

That makes extra photos a risk as well as a chance. Five strong ones will do more for you than the same five plus eleven that are just fine. If you have an upgraded membership, treat the extra slots as room for more good photos, not as a reason to post everything on your phone.

A useful set covers a few different things:

• A clear main image of your face.
• A full-length photo that shows your build.
• One or two of you doing something you actually do.
• One with friends, where you are still easy to spot.

Before you upload, show the set to a friend and ask which photo they would cut first. Cut it. Then check that every photo is recent enough for her to recognize you when you walk in.

Lead with the clearest photo of your face. Follow it with the full-length one, so she knows what you look like from head to toe. Then add the photos that show your life: the hike, the kitchen, the game you play on Sundays.

Keep the group photo well down the list, and make sure you are obvious in it. Leave out the shirtless mirror shot, the car with nobody in it and the sunset. None of them tells her anything about you.

Change the settings and the clothes from one photo to the next, too. Four photos in the same shirt look like one afternoon. Four different places look like a life.

Once she has looked through your photos, she reads what you wrote. The photos earn the look. The bio decides whether she answers when you write to her, or writes to you first.

Give it the same care. Say one or two specific things about how you spend your week, in plain words, and leave her something easy to ask about. A strong set of photos with a bio that reads like a form still loses to a slightly weaker set with a bio that sounds like a person.

If you are updating one, update both. A new main image and a rewritten bio, changed together and left alone for a couple of weeks, will tell you more about your page than any number of extra photos.