A Quality Photograph

Let's use this photograph as an example of a quality photo. It was submitted with more than enough resolution, it had good color balance and exposure. In addition, the subject is centered in the frame and no part of her body is cut off. This gives us the maximum flexability when using it on a business card.

Now let's look at some common problems we encounter with submitted photography.

JPEG Artifacts

When a photo is saved as a JPEG with low quality (high compression) it will exhibit the square distortions shown here. JPEG images, in and of themselves are fine, it is all a matter of how much compression is used when they are saved. A JPEG image saved with high quality (minimum compression) will look as good as the original.

Another factor influencing JPEG artifacting is the size of the image being saved. Often, if the image is too small to begin with, the JPEG artifacts will look even worse than normal when the image is resized.

Consumer grade scanners often introduce a noticeable color cast to the image that is scanned. Sometimes that is too much red, sometimes too much yellow and quite often a dramatic increase in the midtones.

As an example, this image has a significant yellow color cast. We can do our best to correct the image and normalize it to what we perceive as a good skin tone, but since we have nothing but our monitor to go by, we have no way of being sure that what we think looks good will match what you think looks good.

Consumer grade scanners can also introduce a noticeable increase in the midtones.

As an example, this image is far too dark to print. The areas in the image that should be white (her blouse) are gray. This will result in a bad print.

This image is too light. Areas in the image that should be black (corners of the eyes and pupils) are dark grey. A good photo will have both some truly black areas and some truly white areas. Imbalance in either direction results in an unnatural look.

This image was cropped incorrectly resulting in the subject being off center. Also, it is cropped much too close to the top of her head. Ideally we would like to see some background over the top of the subject's head so there is a little bit of image to trim if necessary. A photo that is improperly cropped significantly reduces its usability.

Fancy borders make it impossible to place the photo in the space provided. Please do not send in images with edge effects or oval marque style pictures. If you really want your image to look like that, it would be better to send us an unaltered image and let us apply the effects exactly as necessary for the layout of your card.

This image is an example of multiple problems.

• Cropped to close and off center
• Too dark
• Color balance problems
• JPEG artifacting