How do I add an avatar to each WordPress contributor/author profile?

Both options can work, but I've used a combination of plugins before that may meet your needs. Add New Default Avatar - This plugin allows you to create a new default avatar for comments from users that don't have Gravatars or something already selected in your WP site. - http://trepmal.com/plugins/add-new-default-avatar/ User Avatar - This plugin allows your users to create their own custom avatars for your site. This is great for a community-based site. - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-avatar/ I sincerely hope this helps!

If the authors aren't interested in Gravatar, plugins such as Simple Local Avatars (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-local-avatars/) and User Photo (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-photo/) are both good solutions.

For authors who do not have a Gravatar account or for authors who have an off-line presense you can provide them with avatar but you will need to make edits to your single.php file and manually upload their photo. *Self plug* I wrote a post on this called, Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your WordPress Post http://gabediaz.com/blog/displaying-author-pic-and-bio-in-your-wordpress-post/ Essentially you first make sure that all of your author information is filled out in your profile. Using the information you put in your name field we can have WordPress look for a image in a folder that matches what was entered in your First Name field ie FirstName.jpg. <div class="authbio"> <img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/> <?php the_author_description(); ?> </div> In the above code the author image would be located in the themes/images folder and the displayed image file name would match what was entered in the author's profile section under First Name. The code above is a static option because once entered into your Single.php file it would always display an author pic/bio box so it's best used for when using custom single post templates by category as in all of Author B's posts within Category X will display an author pic/bio. If you wish to turn on the above author pic/bio on a post to post basis you could read, Enabling Author Pic and Bio for WordPress Single Posts http://gabediaz.com/blog/enabling-author-pic-and-bio-for-wordpress-single-posts/

In addition to 's reply, I would add that you can easily change the look of that generic icon if you'd like. Simply paste the following code in the functions.php file of your theme: http://wordpress.pastebin.com/mdyGYAUS Of course, you'll have to replace the path to image I wrote down for the one of your default image.

You can use Gravatar to add an avatar to each wordpress author, contributor or commenter. This gravatar is attached to an email id. So to use this avatar they would have to use that email id . This avatar will be used wherever you comment or in many sites where you create your profile using that email id.  So to create your Avatar Go To Gravatar an add an image you want to show as your avatar. If you want to add custom avatar to each of  the user roles then Jeremy's & Brandon's answer will guide you.

I use WP Gravatar http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-gravatar/ however - some people have found that it adds the gravatar to the pages as well as the post despite putting a check mark in the box saying "exclude from pages" - but there is a fix if your ok with editing the plugin http://wordpress.org/support/topic/exclude-pages-isnt-exlcuding-pages I recently put this one on a new site and it worked great http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/display-avatars/ - Display Avatar