Giftsmade4u - Photo Tips & Techniques

Your designs, photos and images can come from a digital camera, scanner, or the Web.

Any image you plan to use must be saved at approximately 300-dpi at 100% output size for the very best printing results.

It’s helpful to know that shrinking an image on a product will increase its resolution. For example, an image captured at 600 x 900 pixels has 150-dpi at 4” x 6”. However, it can be printed at 300-dpi by reducing its dimensions on the product to 2” x 3”.

Your photos sent to us must be in the original size and unedited. Please do not resize, crop or edit your photo in anyway whatsoever, we will do all that for you.

We ask that you do this to ensure the best quality design for your custom photo gift.

Please keep in mind that the quality of the photo you send to us is very important. Photos that are blurry, grainy, very low resolution cannot be repaired and will not print well on your photo gift. But we will do everything we possibly can to make your photo beautiful.

If you are unsure about the quality of your photo, feel free to send us a copy and we will let you know if it is suitable or if you will need to choose another photo.

Email us anytime with any questions about your picture

Professionally taken photographs must be accompanied by a copyright release signed by the photographer/photography studio. We will not work with any professional photographs without this due to copyright laws.

Images from a Digital Camera

If you wish to use images from a digital camera, before you snap pictures make sure the camera is set at a high enough resolution to result in 300 DPI at the intended photo print size. Most cameras have various settings for resolutions. The highest resolution for your camera depends on how many megapixels it has.

You cannot increase the resolution of a photo after it is taken, except by reducing its printed dimensions (after you upload the image). Be careful when cropping a photo after it is taken. Cropping will reduce the number of pixels in the final image.

Images from a Scanner

Like a digital camera, a scanner must be preset to the proper resolution before image capture. Many scanners default to 150-dpi (or spi). Set your scanner’s resolution so that it results in 300-dpi at the image’s final print size. If your resulting scanned image is smaller than the recommended size or has less dpi than you need, you should either rescan your original at a higher resolution, or use the image for a smaller printed area.

Images from the Web

Images found on the web are typically at a resolution of 72-dpi. This resolution is much too low for quality printing. In addition, most images on the web are protected by copyright laws. For these reasons, we do not recommend using images from the web.

Aspect ratio is the relationship of an image's width to height, or its proportions. Digital cameras produce files with an aspect ratio of 4:3. But many common photo print sizes have a different aspect ratio. For example, a 4 by 6 print has an aspect ratio of 3:2; an 8 by 10 has an aspect ratio of 5:4.

The aspect ratio of your image can be determined by dividing the image’s width by its height. If your image’s aspect ratio is not equal to the aspect ratio of our products, your image may appear stretched or distorted when it is scaled to fit. Of course, the trade off to fix this is that a small part of your image will be cropped to suit.

Original 3:2 Image 8x10 Print (with crop area)

What is resolution? This describes the detail an image holds.

Once you scan an image or take a picture with your digital camera, it becomes digitized—made up of hundreds of thousands of pixels. Pixels are nothing more than very tiny coloured squares that you can see if you increase the magnification of any image to its maximum. Computer monitors generally have a resolution of 72 pixels in an inch (PPI). A pixel is the smallest element of a digital image. The more pixels, or “dots,” per inch ("DPI" most common resolution unit), the higher your image resolution will be.

If you try to enlarge a photo that was not taken with a high megapixel setting (A megapixel is equal to one million pixels), your print may turn out “blocky” or pixilated.

Tips to ensure high-quality photo images

Think ahead: Think about your intentions for your photos before you shoot them, so you can make sure you are using a MP (megapixel) setting that is high enough for the size of print you want to produce later.

Set your MP high: It's a good idea to have your camera set at a much higher MP setting than you initially think you need. That way, you can crop and enlarge any photo without a loss of quality.

* Most images prepared for upload should be 300 dpi at 100% of the final print size. Higher resolution means a more detailed image, and also larger file and longer upload time.

Though digital pictures come in a variety of file formats, most of the pictures on your computer probably use the common JPEG format. Most digital cameras save pictures in the JPEG format to maintain good visual quality without creating large files.

The file size. The amount of space a picture takes up on your computer and how long it takes to e‑mail is determined by the picture's file size. Though more pixels often means a larger file size, the picture's file type (JPEG or TIFF, for example) usually has more to do with file size. A picture saved using TIFF will be much larger than the same picture saved using JPEG. This is because JPEG pictures can be compressed, which makes the file smaller at the cost of slightly lower visual quality. If the picture is not already a JPEG, you can usually save a significant amount of space by saving the file as a JPEG, and then deleting the original TIFF version from your computer.