If you are really good with computers and know your way round a scanner - this page isn't for you! If however you are one of the many people who ask us for some guidance on how to scan and submit a photo to us, we hope you'll find this page useful.
This depends on the product you are buying, as obviously a pouch purse needs a much smaller file than a 1mx1m canvas. The easiest thing though is to set the scanner to scan at 300/600dpi - this will be good for just about anything we make, and we can always make it smaller! There is a complicated equation to arrive at the exact DPI you need, but I wouldn't worry about that. Just scan it in at 300/600dpi. If you are intending us to zoom in a lot when the digital image is made into your item, please make it a bit larger.
All scanners have a means whereby you can marquee (select) only the bit of the scannable area you want. This means that you only scan the photo and not the entire A4 sized area on the scanner - very important if you don't want enormous files. Big files mean a longer upload time, and more disk space and hassle for everyone. It is very often we get a very large A4 scan with a tiny image right in the middle of it!
Most scanners have the ability to manipulate the colours of the photo - Depending on your scanner, messing with this can have bad results - it's a much better idea to scan it unoptimised and let us manage the colour here.
Within reason, we will do our best to remove blemishes and defects on the photo free of charge. Please request this though in the notes section when you make your order, just to be sure that it is brought to our attention.
We find that it's best to send us JPG files because their compression is so good - they really are so much smaller than anything else. Make sure you save it as a high quality JPG though as low quality JPGs aren't very good at all.
