Smiley Faces.

PARENTS around the city are eagerly awaiting delivery of the 5-by-7, 8-by-10 or wallet-size school portraits of their children that typically arrive in mailboxes this time of year. But instead of the stuffy, posed portraits with forced smiles and blue carpet backgrounds customary to the genre, some Brooklyn parents are getting images like these brightly lighted photos against a white background that radiate with their children's personalities. Thomas Roemischer, a Park Slope parent who works at a digital printing shop in Manhattan, began conceiving of this approach several years ago after being disappointed by what he calls the ''puppy mill-style'' portrait he received of his son, Jack, then a preschooler at a neighborhood school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]