The photograph for the service
One photograph has to carry the whole service.
The same picture goes on the order of service, the prayer card, the easel, the slideshow, the obituary and the keepsake. Each one needs something different from it, and you have days rather than weeks. This is the order that finishes.
The short answer
Choose the photograph before anything else, and choose it by what the room will recognise rather than by which one you love most. Then get the best file that exists of it — an original print scanned at 600 dpi, not a phone photograph of a print. Then work out the size each piece needs and print from the biggest requirement downwards.
The job is almost never "make it beautiful". It is "make it hold up when it is printed sixteen inches wide". Those are different problems, and only the second one has a deadline.
01 · The orderChoose, then find the file, then size it, then print.
Almost everyone starts in the middle of that sequence — they find a photograph, put it in a phone app, and only discover at the printer's counter that it is 900 pixels wide. Doing the four steps in order takes about an hour. Doing them backwards takes a day and a half.
- Choose the photograph. One image, decided by the people who will be in the room. This is the only decision on the whole page that cannot be undone later, and it is the one people rush. How to choose it.
- Find the best original. The print itself, or a scan of it at 600 dpi. A screenshot, a forwarded WhatsApp image and a Facebook download are each a copy of a copy, and each has thrown away most of the detail you are about to need.
- Decide what to change. Damage, yes. The face, no. Where that line is.
- Size each piece. One table, six outputs, six different requirements. The size table.
A photograph that is slightly creased is not a failure. A blank space where the photograph should have been is.
02 · One photograph, six jobsWhat the same picture is asked to do.
This is the part nobody explains in advance. A single photograph is expected to work at six different sizes, and the requirements do not scale together. A file that is perfect for the prayer card is useless on the easel; a file that fills the easel may be the wrong shape for the program cover.
| Where it goes | Usual size | Pixels needed | Shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easel portrait | 16 × 20 in | 2400 × 3000 | Portrait or landscape |
| Chapel board | 24 × 36 in | 3600 × 5400 | Usually landscape |
| Program cover | 5.5 × 8.5 in | 1650 × 2550 | Portrait |
| Prayer card | 2.5 × 4.25 in | 750 × 1275 | Portrait, tight crop |
| Slideshow | 1920 × 1080 | 1920 × 1080 | Landscape, 16:9 |
| Obituary notice | on screen | 1200 × 1200 | Square crop |
The useful consequence: one decent scan covers almost all of it. A 4×6 inch print scanned at 600 dpi produces 2400 × 3600 pixels, which is enough for the easel, the program, the cards and the slideshow at once. The only thing it will not do is a 24×36 board, and most services do not use one.
Which means the question is not "can this be blown up". It is which of the six are you actually printing, and whether the file you have is bigger than the requirement of the largest one.
03 · The mistakeThe photograph the family loves is often the wrong photograph.
This is the hardest thing on this site to say plainly, and it is the thing most worth saying.
The room at a funeral is full of people who knew the person's face at the end. Not at twenty-five. Not on their wedding day. The most common and most painful mistake is using the portrait the family loves best — frequently thirty or forty years old — at a service for someone who died at eighty-four. The picture is beautiful. Half the room does not recognise her.
A recent photograph, slightly out of focus, taken on a phone at a birthday, does the job that the photograph is actually there to do: it says this is the person you came for. Sharpness is not the measure. Recognition is.
There is a way out of the conflict, and it is not a compromise. Use the recent photograph for the service — the easel, the program cover — and use the old favourite in the slideshow, where the photograph is allowed to be a life rather than a face. The service portrait is a greeting. The slideshow is the story. They are allowed to be different pictures. The full version of this decision.
04 · If it is damagedCreased, torn, water-stained, or only in a group shot.
Most usable photographs are damaged in small ways, and most of that damage is repairable without touching the person in it: creases, dust, foxing spots, a colour cast, a date stamp in the corner, a distracting object behind a shoulder, the shadow of the phone that took the picture.
What cannot be repaired is information that was never there. A tear through a shoulder can be reconstructed plausibly. A face that is half missing can be guessed at, and the guess will be visible to anyone who knew them. That is worth understanding before you pay anybody: what is fixable and what is invention.
And if the only photograph is a group shot, that is a normal starting point rather than a disaster. Crop to head and shoulders, keep the whole head including the top of the hair, and do not crop through a hand or a shoulder that the person is leaning on. Working from one photograph.
Questions people ask at this point.
How long does it take to get a photograph ready for a funeral?
An automatic restoration takes seconds. A human retoucher usually needs two to five working days. A specialist studio typically quotes one to three weeks, which is out of reach for most services. If the service is in under a week, the realistic route is an automated restoration plus same-day printing, and printing what you have if the restoration does not arrive in time.
Can an old photograph be blown up to 16 by 20?
Usually yes, and the arithmetic is unforgiving but simple. A 16x20 print viewed from a few steps away needs about 150 pixels per inch, which is 2400 x 3000 pixels. A 4x6 inch print scanned at 600 dpi gives 2400 x 3600, so it covers the easel comfortably. A photo downloaded from Facebook at 2048 pixels wide does not.
Should I use the most recent photograph or a favourite one?
Recent for the service, favourite for the slideshow. The room is full of people who knew the person's face at the end, and a portrait from thirty years earlier often is not recognised by half of them. The slideshow is where the earlier photograph belongs, because it is showing a life rather than greeting the room.
The only good photograph is on someone else's phone. What now?
Ask for the original file rather than the version sent through a messaging app. Most messaging apps shrink images to around 1600 pixels wide, which is enough for a prayer card and not enough for an easel. Sending it by email as an attachment, or through a shared folder, usually preserves the full size.
Is it acceptable to have the photograph retouched at all?
Repairing damage so the photograph survives printing is normal and almost always right. Changing the person is a different act, and it is the one that goes wrong. Removing a crease is not vanity; removing a scar can be, and the people in the room will notice.
If the file needs repairing before it is printed
Pinin removes creases, dust, fading, colour casts and blur, and keeps the face as it is — the first photograph is free, so the cheapest test is the worst photograph you have.
Repair the photograph