How to Choose a Photo That Prints and Engraves Well

The quick version

• Use the original photo from your phone or camera, not a screenshot or a copy saved from social media.
• Choose a photo that’s sharp, bright and evenly lit.
• Pick a photo where the subject fills the frame: one or two faces, or a pet, rather than a big group far away.
• Upload JPG, PNG, HEIC or WEBP files up to 10MB.

Resolution: how big should my photo be?

Resolution is the number of pixels in your photo. More pixels means more detail, so the image stays sharp when it’s printed at size. As a rough guide:

Photo width (shortest side)	What to expect
Under 800px	Likely to look soft or blocky. We’ll warn you when you upload, and we may email you before making it.
800–1,500px	Fine for small items such as keyrings, necklaces, coasters and baubles.
1,500–2,500px	Good for mugs, phone cases, slate coasters and engraved coasters.
2,500px and above	Best for larger items such as photo slates, chopping boards, tumblers, t-shirts and hoodies.

Most phones from the last few years take photos around 3,000–4,000px wide, which is plenty for anything we make.

Lighting and focus

• Natural daylight is best. Photos taken indoors at night or in dim pubs and restaurants often come out grainy.
• Avoid harsh shadows across faces, and very bright backgrounds behind people (such as a sunny window), which can turn faces into silhouettes.
• Check it’s in focus. Zoom in on your phone: if eyes and edges look blurry on screen, they’ll look blurry on the gift too.
• Skip heavy filters. Strong filters and effects can make skin tones look odd once printed.

Photos for laser engraving

Engraving works differently from printing. The laser burns your photo into the wood in a single tone, so it comes out in shades of brown rather than colour. For engraved items, such as our photo engraved wooden coaster:

• Choose a photo with good contrast: a clear difference between light and dark areas.
• Plain or simple backgrounds work much better than busy ones.
• Close-ups of one or two faces, or a pet, engrave better than group shots.
• Wood grain varies, so each engraving is slightly different. That’s part of its character.

Cropping and positioning

You don’t need to crop your photo before uploading. On the product page you can zoom in and drag your photo to position it, and the live preview shows how it will sit on the item. A few tips:

• Leave a little space around heads, so nobody loses the top of their hair.
• Landscape photos suit the wrap-around shape of mugs best.
• Zooming in a long way on a small part of a photo reduces its effective resolution, so start with the closest shot you have.

iPhone photos (HEIC)

iPhones often save photos as HEIC files. That’s absolutely fine: we accept HEIC. Some browsers can’t show a HEIC preview on screen, but we still receive and use your full photo. If you’d like to see the preview, you can choose “Most Compatible” in your iPhone camera settings, or share the photo as a JPG.

Screenshots and social media copies

Screenshots, and photos saved from Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, are usually compressed and reduced in size. They might look fine on a phone screen but often print blurry. Wherever you can, ask the person who took the photo to send you the original file, for example by email or a shared album set to full quality.

Is it OK to use any photo?

Please only upload photos you own or have permission to use. We can’t print copyrighted images, such as professional photographers’ work without permission, or trademarked logos and characters.

What happens if my photo isn’t great?

A real person checks every design before it’s made. If we think your photo won’t come out well, we’ll email you before going ahead, so you can send a better one or tell us to continue. See also our how to order guide.