Photo Quality Guidelines for Printing
Ensure your photos look their best in print with quality requirements, enhancement tips, and pre-print checks for professional-looking memory books
Look for quality badges on your photos to see what needs attention.
Understanding Quality Indicators
Excellent
- Perfect for printing at any size
- Sharp and professional quality
- No enhancement needed
Okay
- Will print adequately at smaller sizes
- Enhancement recommended
- May show slight softness
Poor
- May look pixelated when printed
- Enhancement advised
- Keep small or replace if possible
Quality Requirements
Minimum for good printing:
- 300 DPI (dots per inch)
- 1200 pixels minimum on longest side
Optimal for exceptional results:
- 600 DPI for maximum clarity
- 3000+ pixels on longest side
Supported File Types
.JPG or .JPEG
Best for photos
.PNG
Great for graphics
.GIF
Static images only
.WEBP
Modern format
Large File Size? Don't worry! Keepsake automatically optimises all images for web viewing while preserving quality for printing.
How to Check Quality
Open your photo gallery
View all quality badges at once to identify which photos need attention
Check the colour indicators
Green means ready to print, yellow suggests enhancement, red needs improvement
Use the bookmark sidebar
See specific images that need attention organised by entry
Preview your book
Always preview before printing to check final quality and layout
Enhancement Guidelines
Do Enhance
- Old family photos and scanned prints
- Low-resolution downloads from social media
- Photos from older phones (pre-2020)
- Slightly blurry but important shots
Don't Enhance
- Already excellent quality photos
- When faces look unnatural after enhancement
- Heavily damaged or corrupted images
- Artistic blur that's intentional
Pre-Print Checklist
Review all photo quality badges
Check every photo in your book for green, yellow, or red indicators
Enhance poor and okay photos
Improve quality but review each result carefully, especially faces
Preview your book
Use the preview feature to see exactly how photos will appear when printed
Check on different devices
Review on multiple screens as colours can vary between devices
Troubleshooting
This usually happens when photos have been downloaded from social media or messaging apps, which compress images to save space. Try finding the original photos in your phone's camera roll for better quality.
Sometimes AI enhancement can make faces look too smooth or create unusual effects. It's worth previewing the results and returning to the original if the enhancement doesn't look natural.
This is completely normal - photos typically print 10-15% darker than they appear on screen. You might want to brighten them slightly before printing for the best results.
Absolutely! They might look a bit pixelated, but you have several options: enhance them using our tools, keep them smaller in your layout, or embrace the vintage quality as part of the story.
We recommend uploading your originals first, then using Keepsake's built-in editor. This helps preserve quality since external editing can sometimes reduce it through compression.
If you need more assistance with this topic please contact support at support@keepsakeproject.co.
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