Sizes

What size every piece needs, in pixels.

Printers talk in inches, files are measured in pixels, and the two only meet through pixels per inch. This page is the whole arithmetic, so you can stop guessing and hand the printer a file that will work.

5 min readReviewed 10 November 2026Join Pinin

The short answer

Pixels needed = inches × pixels per inch. Use 300 ppi for anything held in the hand — cards, programs, a table print. Use 150 ppi for anything on a wall or an easel, because it is seen from a few steps back. A 16 × 20 inch easel print therefore needs 2400 × 3000 pixels, and a 4 × 6 inch print scanned at 600 dpi produces 2400 × 3600 — enough for every piece listed here except a 24 × 36 board.

01 · OutputsThe full table.

Common memorial print sizes with the pixels each requires. Sizes are the trade standards; your " "funeral home or printer always has the final word.
Piece	Finished size	ppi	Pixels needed
Prayer card	2.5 × 4.25 in	300	750 × 1275
Memorial card	4 × 6 in	300	1200 × 1800
Program cover panel	5.5 × 8.5 in	300	1650 × 2550
Program sheet, flat	8.5 × 11 in	300	2550 × 3300
Guest book table print	8 × 10 in	300	2400 × 3000
Easel portrait	16 × 20 in	150	2400 × 3000
Large easel	18 × 24 in	150	2700 × 3600
Chapel board	24 × 36 in	150	3600 × 5400
Slideshow frame	1920 × 1080 px	—	1920 × 1080
Obituary notice, online	square	—	1200 × 1200

Note the direction of the numbers. The two biggest prints have the lowest ppi requirement, because nobody stands with their nose against an easel. The smallest piece — the prayer card — has the highest, because it is held at reading distance in someone's hand. This is why a file can be useless for a card and perfectly good for the easel, and why "is it high resolution?" is not a question with a single answer.

02 · Your fileWork out what you actually have.

Find the pixel dimensions of your file — on Windows, right-click the file and open Properties, then the Details tab; on a Mac, Get Info; on a phone, most gallery apps will show it under an "i" or "details" button. Then either compare it against the table above, or use this.

What can I print from this file?

What you have

What you need to print

Calculating…

Runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

03 · SourcesWhat each source is worth, before you scan anything.

Maximum print size from common sources, on the long edge, at both viewing distances. These are " "floors, not targets.
Source	Pixels you get	At 300 ppi	At 150 ppi
4 × 6 print scanned at 600 dpi	2400 × 3600	12 in	24 in
4 × 6 print scanned at 300 dpi	1200 × 1800	6 in	12 in
5 × 7 print scanned at 600 dpi	3000 × 4200	14 in	28 in
Phone photograph, 12MP	4032 × 3024	13 in	27 in
Downloaded from Facebook	2048 × 1536	7 in	14 in
Received through messaging app	1600 × 1200	5 in	11 in
Screenshot of a photo on a phone	1170 × 1000	4 in	8 in

Two conclusions follow, and they are the reason this page exists.

A photograph that came through a messaging app or from a social media download is usually not enough for an easel print. It is enough for a prayer card, an obituary notice, and often the program. That does not mean it is useless — it means it should be printed small rather than blown up and then second best on the easel.

Scanning is cheaper than every other solution. A 4 × 6 print scanned at 600 dpi covers the easel, the program, the cards and the slideshow in one pass. The scan costs nothing at a library or a friend's flatbed, and it eliminates the problem this entire page is about.

04 · ShapeThe second problem: shape is not the same as size.

A file can have enough pixels and still not fit the piece, because the aspect ratio is different. A landscape photograph with plenty of resolution will not fill a portrait easel frame without cropping, and a portrait photograph on a 16:9 slidescreen leaves two bars at the side.

Easel and program: portrait. A landscape original needs a crop that keeps the whole head and cuts below the collarbone.
Slideshow: landscape, 16:9. A portrait original will either pillar-box or need a blurred background fill, which most slideshow tools do automatically and which looks better than it sounds.
Obituary notice: square. The most brutal crop of the set, because it removes width from the sides of a face. Check where it lands before you submit.
Prayer card: a tall portrait, so the tightest crop of all. Shoulders are usually lost, which is fine; the top of the head is not.

Ask the printer for the exact shape before you crop. Cropping to the printer's template takes a minute and saves a reprint; cropping to a guess and then discovering the frame is 5:7 has cost people a day they did not have.

05 · Not enoughWhen the file is genuinely too small.

There are four honest options, in order of how well they work.

Print smaller. This is almost always the right answer, and it is not a defeat. A sharp 8 × 10 that fills a table properly looks better than a soft 16 × 20 on an easel, and nobody at the service is comparing sizes.
Find a better source. The original print, another relative's copy, a negative, the camera roll of whoever took the picture. Before spending anything on enlargement, spend ten minutes on this.
Upscale it. Modern upscaling genuinely improves a soft file at moderate enlargement — roughly double is realistic, four times is optimistic. It adds sharpness and invented detail in equal measure, which is acceptable for a background and questionable for a face.
Accept software softness. A slightly soft 16 × 20 seen from six feet away, in a room lit for a service, is far less of a problem than it looks on a bright monitor at arm's length. Judge it by printing a 6 × 4 test, not by zooming to 100% on screen.

What does not work is aggressive sharpening to compensate. It produces halos and a brittle, crunchy texture that is more noticeable than the softness it was meant to hide.

Questions people ask at this point.

What resolution do I need for a 16 by 20 photo?

About 2400 x 3000 pixels at 150 ppi, which is the viewing distance an easel print is seen from. At 300 ppi you would need 4800 x 6000, which almost no family photograph has and which is not necessary at this size.

Is 300 dpi the same as 300 ppi?

In practice yes, and printers use the terms interchangeably. Strictly, ppi describes the image file and dpi describes the printing device, but when a print shop asks for 300 dpi they mean an image with 300 pixels per inch at the final print size.

How do I find out how many pixels my photo has?

Right-click the file and open Properties, then the Details tab on Windows; Get Info on a Mac; or the information button in most phone gallery apps. Look for dimensions in pixels, not file size in megabytes — a large file size does not mean a large image.

Can a photo be enlarged without losing quality?

Not without limit. Enlarging adds invented pixels once the real ones run out. Doubling is usually acceptable, quadrupling is not for a face. Printing smaller is always better than upscaling further.

What size is a funeral program photo?

The cover panel of a standard letter sheet folded in half is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, so 1650 x 2550 pixels at 300 ppi. Larger 8.5 x 11 inch folded programs exist and give a bigger panel, which needs 2550 x 3300.

If the file is big enough but the photograph is damaged

Creases, dust, fading and blur are all repairable without touching the face. Pinin does that in about twelve seconds, and the first photograph is free — useful when you are testing whether it is worth printing at all.

Repair the photograph