Tips for Choosing the Best Photo for a Memorial Plaque

After the death of a loved one, you want their grave to capture their image perfectly—especially if you put a ceramic photograph on it. Choosing the best-fitting image can be a challenge, whether you have a lot of photos to choose from or just a handful. If you’re having difficulties narrowing down just one photo to immortalize the appearance of your late loved one, our tips for choosing the best photo for a memorial plaque will help you find the best fit.

Don’t Pick Too Small of an Image

The first consideration you need to make when picking a photo for your monument is its size. If the photo itself is tiny, making it larger will cause it to lose quality and become blurry. While the same is true for scaling down a large photo, it’s much easier to keep a quality image while making a big picture smaller than it is when making a small photo larger.

This often happens if you crop your loved one out of a group photo. Try to avoid cropping images unless it’s absolutely necessary—a picture where your loved one is the focal point will always look better than a group photo.

Choose a Clear, Simple Picture

As much as you may want to choose an action-packed photo for the ceramic portrait, it may not be the best fit for clearly depicting the image of the dearly departed. You want the image to perfectly capture their face and expression rather than raise questions.

While the dramatic photograph may work well in a scrapbook or presentation on their life, a clear image of their upper body will help others imagine what your loved one looked like when they were alive—especially if they’re descendants.

Ensure the Photo Is High Quality

The quality of the photo that you scan or send in is the quality that you’ll receive on the ceramic photograph. Choose a picture with no blurriness, red-eye, or pixilation and scan it to a computer in color—unless you’re scanning a black and white image. Avoid sending in an image that you printed off the computer; just put the image itself in our photo editor as you order the picture.

Avoid Pictures With Multiple People

As mentioned before, choosing a picture where your loved one is the main focal point is a large element in any tip for choosing the best photo for a memorial plaque. You may want to include your entire family in the photo that you choose to represent your loved one, but the group photo will only confuse other people and make them wonder which person is the one memorialized. Couples can work sometimes, especially for shared gravestones, but anything more than two people will cause confusion.

When looking for the right photo to fill your oval picture frame for a headstone, don’t forget to use MemorialPics’s on-site photo editor to visualize the final product that you’ll receive.