Photo Business Cards

Using Your Own Photos On Business Cards

Using your own photos for photo business cards has some advantages and possible disadvantages. The advantage is that your own photos are yours. They are unique and therefore will not appear on anyone else's photo business cards or other marketing materials. Because they are yours, and you chose the subject matter of your photos, they will better represent your business than stock photos ever could. For example; let's say you own a hardware store. You could probably find a stock photo of a collection of tools, or you could have your staff asseble in front of your store and take a picture. Both represent your business rather well, but the photo of your store front and your staff are unique to your business and therefore, unique to your photo business cards. The presence of the staff in the picture adds a personal and very human touch. The store front in the photo helps to make it more recognizable for people that have seen your photo business cards.
Real estate is another great example. If you're a realtor looking for photo business cards, you could find a stock photo of a cityscape or even a dream home. Either of these would represent your business quite well. But adding your own photo to these is even better. People like to feel like they're doing business with a person, not a faceless corporate entity. Some sites offer stock backgrounds along with the ability to add your photo to the design. This is especially effective for real estate business cards.
But remember; there are disadvantages to using your own pictures for photo business cards as well. It takes some time and skill to get a good photo. If you don't have one on hand, you may be tempted to use a photo that's less than ideal. You also have to know how to use a scanner to get an electronic copy of a photo print or you have to know how to download and store photos from a digital camera. You also have to know how to either email or upload files on a website. Luckily, most professional printing websites that offer file uploaders also offer detailed instructions on how to use the uploader. A few even offer tips on how to select and send the best picture for photo business cards. This can be very important. If you're not a designer, it can be difficult to tell if your photo will work well with a business card layout. Finally, you also have to know something about resolution. Print media (printed material) requires a much higher resolution than websites or word docs or things you may have created and/or printed from your PC.

Here's a list of criteria for helping you to take and select the best photos for your photo business cards:

  1. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS! Just make sure the image is sharp and clear. I get way too many photo business card orders with fuzzy, out of focus photos.
  2. Use good lighting. Pay attention to the lighting conditions. Use a flash indoors. But the best amateur photos we get are usually taken outside on a sunny day. A flash can sometimes make the photo a bit harsh looking. We get a great deal of photo business card orders with photos that are too dark and dull due to poor lighting.
  3. Pay attention to color. Take a good look at your photo before ordering your photo business cards. Are the colors accurate? Quite often, there was something wrong with the film, developing process or the lighting that throws the colors off. Good designers can usually correct for this to some degree, but if the designer has never met you in person, they have no idea what your actual skin tone is supposed to be. I've actually had one customer request a refund because she looked orange in her photo. But the original image she sent had poor lighting and an orange hue to her skin tone and made it look like she was using 'tan-in-a-can' or something. There was very little I could do to correct for this. So, review your photos and choose carefully.
  4. No extreme close-ups. Margins we mentioned in a previous article called 'Using Photos Of Yourself On Business Cards'. This is very important. Your photo needs to have some space around the subject so the business card designer has some room to work with. Extreme close-ups can also be rather harsh and unforgiving. Better to start with a large format bust shot or full body shot and let the designer crop it down.
  5. Don't crop. (See #4). The more a designer has to work with, the better the final photo business card design will be. Although you can certainly give the designer some ideas about how you want it cropped.
  6. Film vs. Digital.
    • Photographic film has been around for a very long time and the process is perfected. You can often get great shots from a disposable 35mm camera that rival expensive digital camera images. Local drug stores have some fantastic developing options. Many even provide you with a CD of your photos in digital .jpg file formats. These are ready to go! They're big enough and in the right format for printing. Just select your favorite photo using some of the aforementioned criteria and send them on to a printing company when you order photo business cards.
    • The advantage to digital cameras is that there's no developing and no waiting. Most digital cameras create files that are the right size and format for photo business cards. Just download the photos to your computer, select the best shot using the using the aforementioned criteria and place your photo business card order. BUT…if your camera is more than 2 or 3 years old, you may find it difficult to impossible to get a clear, sharp image. Many older (yes, two years means 'old' for digital cameras) digital cameras produce images that are grainy or slightly out of focus. So, review the images carefully before sending them to a printing company for use on photo business cards.
  7. Scanning your photos. Now we're dealing with more serious hardware and a program that comes with it. Read the instructions, use the help files and do a few practice runs with your scanner so you really know how to use it. It really is well worth your time. You'll probably use many times while creating your various marketing materials. For photo business cards and other professionally printed material, resolution is a big deal. Resolution is usually pretty easy to find in your scanner program and is usually referred to as 'DPI', meaning dots per inch. The rule of thumb is that photo business cards require a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. But if you're scanning an 8x10 print, that will produce an enormous file. You can scan 8x10 or larger prints at 100 DPI and it will be just fine. For 5x7 photos, 200 DPI is good. For 3.5x5 photos or smaller, go with the 300 DPI. Save the scanned image as a .jpg, then view it full size to check for quality. It's also very important to know where you saved it on your computer so you can find it when you're ordering your photo business cards.
  8. Photo size. Don't send photos from websites, they are simply too small. In general, print media requires a minimum resolution of 300 DPI and most website images are only 72 DPI. Here are the minimum dimensions of images for photo business cards: 2.25 inches tall at 300 DPI or 6.75 inches tall at 100 DPI to cover the photo business cards top to bottom. 3.75 inches wide at 300 DPI or 11.25 inches wide at 100 DPI to cover the photo business cards side to side. If you need to send something smaller, your photo will have to be smaller on the photo business cards and will not be a full bleed. For more info, see 'Using Photos Of Yourself On Business Cards'.
  9. Review your photos carefully before ordering photo business cards. Make sure you view the photo full size to check for sharpness, focus, grain, etc. Just make sure it looks good at full size before sending it to a photo business card printing company.

This website covers all of these things in the articles accessable from the home page.
Now let's get into some more specific examples;