Guide
What photo should you upload?
Short answer: a clear view of the face, taken close enough that you could recognise them from across a room. Everything else — the mess behind them, the bad lighting, the crooked framing — we can work with. Here is exactly what we check and why.
The checks that run before anything is made
Every upload is scored before a card exists. This is not a formality — if the photo cannot support a result that looks like the person, the flow stops and asks for a different one rather than producing something uncertain.
- Face detected, and large enough in frame to preserve
- Sharpness — is the subject actually in focus
- Lighting — flat or very dark light loses facial detail
- Obstruction — cages, brims, hands, hair across the face
- Crop — is anything important cut off at the edge
- Resolution, and the largest size it can be printed at
- How many people are in the shot
Why the background genuinely does not matter
This surprises people. The subject is cut out of the original photo and composited onto a stage we draw — an ice plane, a theatre floor, a bowling lane. The garage shelving, the school lockers, the parked cars behind the graduate: none of it travels with them.
That is why a car-park photo after a ceremony is usually fine, and why the messiest workshop we tested made no difference to the finished card. What is behind the person is replaced, not tidied.
Framing: closer than feels natural
The card's photo window is nearly square and anchored to the top, so the head belongs in the upper third. A full-length shot is the single most common mistake.
Every full-body dance photo we tested came back with the dancer's face smaller on the card than the jersey number. The pose was beautiful and the person was unrecognisable. Head-and-torso with one arm in frame keeps both.
What we will not do to a photo
Faces are not regenerated, reshaped, slimmed, aged, or changed in skin tone. The person who comes out is the person who went in. Backgrounds get replaced and lighting gets matched to the new scene; the subject does not.
This is also why we would rather ask for another photo than deliver a flattering stranger. A card that does not look like them has failed, however good it looks.
Resolution, if you are printing
A 2.5 × 3.5 inch card at 300 DPI needs 825 × 1125 pixels including bleed. Most modern phone photos clear that comfortably. A display print at 11 × 14 needs roughly 3375 × 4275, which is where older or heavily cropped photos start to struggle.
You will be told the largest size a photo can be printed at before you choose a product, so you are never picking a size the file cannot support.
Questions
My photo has other people in it. Is that a problem?
No. You pick which person to feature, and we cut them out. We never guess who the subject is — no face matching, no identity search.
What if my photo gets rejected?
You upload a different one. Nothing has been charged at that point, and a rejection never uses up a revision.
Can you fix a blurry photo?
Sharpening helps a slightly soft photo. It cannot invent detail that was never captured — if the face is genuinely out of focus we will ask for another.
Does an old photo work?
Often, yes. Age matters less than face size and focus. A small, sharp face beats a large, blurry one.
Ready when you are
Pick what you're celebrating, or jump straight in — nothing is charged until you approve a proof.