The wonderful thing about photo save-the-dates is that your personality is front and center. You need nothing more than a shot of your happy, smiling, in-love faces to get guests excited about your wedding to come!
While you don’t actually need professional engagement shots, you do need a high-resolution image in order for your printed stationery to look its best. We’ve compiled some tips to help you get show-off worthy results, whether you’re submitting a professional file or a snapshot from your recent camping trip!
- Providing a high-res file is number one. 300 dpi is always preferred for printing, but depending on the size of the file and the print size, you might be able to get away with less. As a rule of thumb, the higher the resolution, the better the printed image will be. Low-res images translate into fuzzy or pixelated pictures and you don’t want that!
- Increasing the dpi of a file, doesn’t actually make the image any better.
- If you’re working with a professional, make sure your contract includes high-res print files!
- If you’re not really comfortable with photo editing, limit what changes you make. A seemingly innocent crop could diminish the quality. Maybe ask a tech-savvy friend for a favor!
- Photos will print darker than they appear on screen, so be cautious of heavy shadows in your image, especially on faces.
- Orientation matters! If you prefer a landscape (horizontal) oriented save-the-date, trying to make a portrait (vertical) oriented image fit is going to be difficult, if at all possible.
- You can customize your save-the-date to work with the photo you love most; even if the design pictured online is landscape, we can swap it around for you!
- Consider the composition of the photo and let that guide the placement of any text. (Generally, we’ll fit in your text where it works best, but it is something to think about.)
- TGK offers backside printing so that your photo can shine with minimal, if any, text across the front. (Most of our designs picture wording of some sort over the photo, but we are always happy to accommodate your special requests!)
- Contrast is key for legible type. The look of “white” text (it’s actually not white ink, but the paper showing through) is better achieved with a darker background, just as colorful or dark text will stand out against a light background.
- When in doubt, just ask. We’ll let you know if something seems off on our end and we’ll do what we can to ensure your photo save-the-date makes it onto the front of all your guests’ fridges!
We recently launched several new save-the-date designs that truly let your photograph shine! Check them out and let us know what you think. We can’t wait to see how creative you get with your photo save-the-dates!
Pictured: Flirt Photo Save-the-Date and Poster Photo Save-the-Date
