The commonest disappointment in printed photo gifts is not the design or the paper. It is a photograph that looked fine on a phone and printed soft, discovered on page nine of a finished object.
It is also the easiest thing to check in advance, which is why this page exists.
The short answer
A photograph needs roughly 300 pixels for every inch it will be printed at. Anything beyond that is spare; meaningfully below it starts to look soft.
| Placement | Printed at about | Pixels you want |
|---|---|---|
| Small, several to a page | 2 inches wide | 600 px wide |
| A third of a page | 3 inches | 900 px |
| Half a page | 4 inches | 1,200 px |
| Full page | 8 inches | 2,400 px |
| Full spread across two pages | 16 inches | 4,800 px |
Any phone from the last decade shoots at 3,000 pixels wide or more, so a photograph taken on a phone and sent properly will print at any size in a magazine. The camera is almost never the problem.
The problem is almost always the messaging app
Sending a picture as a normal image on a messaging app compresses it, often to around 1,000 pixels on the long edge and sometimes less. That is fine small and visibly soft across a full page.
Send photographs as a Document rather than a Photo. Same app, same chat, no compression. It is the highest-value thing in this entire guide and it costs one extra tap. The step-by-step →
The same applies to anything that has been through a social platform. A picture saved from someone’s profile is a compressed copy of a compressed copy.
Files that cannot be rescued
Some sources are small at origin and no amount of care recovers them.
Screenshots of photographs. A screenshot is capped at your screen’s resolution, which is far below the original. Find the original instead.
Pictures from very old phones, or scanned on a low setting. Sometimes 600 pixels is genuinely all there is.
Anything downloaded from a website. Web images are deliberately small.
For these the answer is placement rather than software: at postcard size a small file is fine, across a spread it is not. We flag which of yours fall into that bracket before anything prints, which is part of what the proof is for.
What the design proof shows you →
Old printed photographs
Photographing a print with your phone works better than most people expect, and better than a cheap scanner.
Flat surface, daylight from a window, no flash, the phone parallel to the photograph rather than at an angle, and fill the frame. A phone photograph of a 1980s print taken that way prints perfectly well at half-page size.
Frequently asked
What resolution do I need for a photo book? About 300 pixels per printed inch, so 1,200 pixels wide for a half-page image and 2,400 for a full page. Modern phone photographs comfortably exceed both.
Why do my photos look blurry when printed? Almost always compression in transit rather than the original file. Sending as a Photo rather than a Document is the usual cause.
How do I send photos without losing quality? Attach them as a Document instead of a Photo. That bypasses compression entirely.
Can you use screenshots? Only at small sizes. A screenshot is limited to your screen resolution, which is well below the original photograph.
What about old printed photos? Photograph them flat in daylight without flash, filling the frame. That beats a cheap scanner and prints well at moderate sizes.
Part of our complete photo magazine guide. See also: using blurry photographs on purpose, choosing photos for polaroid prints, paper and printing explained and how to choose photos.
Ready when you are: Photo magazines from ₹499 · Polaroid prints from ₹270