Our personalised photo keepsakes are some of our most popular gifts at Create Gift Love: we make leather photo keyrings, personalised photo bookmarks, photo wall displays and lots lots more, all designed to celebrate the most important moments in your life. We understand the significance that many of our gifts hold and the thought that goes into choosing the perfect personalisation for your order, so it’s no surprise that one of the most common questions to land in our inbox is “will my photo fit on this keyring/coaster/bookmark”. In this blog post we are going to share our top tips for choosing the perfect photograph for your Create Gift Love keepsake and show you how to use our website’s new photo preview function.
1. Think about the sentiment and the celebration
First things first, have a think about the person you’re buying for and the occasion they are celebrating - what kind of photo will make their eyes light up when they unwrap their gift? Something that reminds them of you, a silly memory you share or a milestone moment you want to capture? Our photo keepsakes are made to be treasured, so think of a photograph that they will want to hold onto for years to come, something that takes them back to their first Father’s Day, that milestone anniversary or birthday celebration like no other. Or, failing that, just choose a really funny photo that they won’t be able to help smiling at.
2. Think about the shape of the product you’re choosing
Create Gift Love’s handmade keepsake gifts come in all shapes and sizes – from small rectangular keyrings to long and thin bookmarks and our half-moon photo baubles – which means that not every photograph will be suitable for every product. When you’re choosing a photograph to use for your order you need to keep in mind the shape and size of the finished gift. A super wide group shot probably won’t work well on a hexagon shape, while a tall narrow portrait won’t be best suited to a square coaster. Imagine having a picture frame in your hand and trying to fit your photo in it – will everyone be in frame or will someone be cut out?
Take a look at the examples below to see what we mean.
As you can see, there's no way you could fit all 8 people within the hexagon shape, as the photo it just too wide.
Whereas this lovely wedding photo fits in perfectly - there's a good amount of background space which means that no important details are lost when the photo is cropped.
3. Think about the size of the finished product
Similar to the guidelines on shape, it’s also worth thinking about the size of the finished product you’re ordering and how clearly your photo will appear on it. Now, as our printers are top of the range and reproduce images to an exceptional standard, the size of the product isn’t a problem for most photos, but there are some exceptions.
If you’re buying a 3 x 3cm keyring, it’s probably not the best place for your little one’s year 2 full class photo, as each of those smiling faces will be so teeny tiny that you’ll struggle to spot who is who, and similarly anything with text printed on it (like lettering on a t-shirt) might not be legible when printed on a product that’s super small. Take a look at the dimensions on the product page and try to imagine your photograph scaled down to that size.
Quality-wise, you don’t need to be a professional photographer or have your pictures taken in a studio - photos taken on your phone are usually absolutely fine to use.
4. Test the photo on our new preview tool
Until now we haven’t always been able to offer proofs and previews for customer approval due to the number of orders processed by our small team each day (although we always do our best to help where we can!). However, our brand new photo preview tool means you can now decide on the exact crop of your photo before you place your order and you can test out as many photo options as you like before submitting! All you have to do is select the ‘upload and crop’ button on any of our photo product pages and you’ll be able to preview your photograph within the product shape. It takes out all the guesswork and helps to ensure that your Create Gift Love keepsake is all that you were hoping for.
- Click ‘upload & crop image’
- Select your file - you can upload directly from your device or import images from Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive and more
- Preview your crop - the app automatically adjusts your photograph to the shape of the product you’re ordering so you can see how it fits. And if you’re not happy…
- Crop your image! Click the crop button (circled in red) to adjust the position of your photo
- Drag and resize your photo until you’re happy with the preview displayed, then click ‘apply’
- Make any final edits - the app lets you rotate, retouch and change your photo to grayscale; you can play around until you’re happy
- Click ‘add’ - you’ll be taken back to the product page and you can see a thumbnail of your final image as we will print on your product
Hopefully these tips will help you choose the perfect photograph for your new Create Gift Love keepsake but, as always, if you have any questions or concerns before ordering us just give us a shout and we will be more than happy to help you.