Your friend loves jigsaw puzzles and you want to order a custom puzzle for them. You are on the Portrait Puzzles website and ready to turn your photos into puzzles. What photo to choose? Continue reading for some suggestions to make the best custom photo puzzle possible.

Pets make great custom puzzles.

Pet photos make great custom puzzles!

What is the Best Resolution for a Photo Puzzle?

This is a question we get all the time. Portrait Puzzles has a wide array of puzzle sizes. We have small, 4.5” x 6” postcard sized puzzles up to huge 36” x 48” floor puzzles. An image that may look great on a small puzzle, may not have the resolution required for our larger puzzles. How do you know if your image will work?

Vacation photos are popular for personalized puzzles.

Will my photo work?

We recommend photos have at least 100 DPI or dots per inch at the completed puzzle size. When looking at image sizes the dots are referred to as pixels. For example, let’s look at our most popular 500-piece custom puzzle. The finished size of this puzzle is 16” x 20”. Take the recommend 100 pixels per inch and multiply it by the dimensions. For the 500-piece custom puzzle you need an image that is 1600 pixels by 2000 pixels or larger.

Great…..but how do you know what your image size is? You can do this with a few simple steps. First find the image the file on your computer. Once you locate it right click to bring up a menu. You will get a menu that will look like this:
Right click to see custom photo puzzle image properties.

Select “Properties” then you get another window.

From this window select the tab labeled details. Read down and you will see it gives “Dimensions”, “Width”, and “Height”. Voila! You can see from this example the photo is 3120 x 4160. This will be a great photo to make into puzzles!Click details to see custom photo puzzle dimensions.

My Photo is Too Small for a Custom Puzzle

You have a photo that you need made into a puzzle, but it is smaller that we recommend. You try to upload it anyway and the website is giving you the dreaded, “Sorry, this file is too small” message. What can you do?

There are a couple of issues that we see on a regular basis. The most common is that you found the image that you want to turn into a personalized puzzle on Facebook. When photos post, Facebook reduces the resolution to make the page load fast. Your best option is to try to get the original photo from the person who posted.

A similar problem occurs when you take a screenshot of an image you find on the internet. The original resolution may work to make a puzzle from a picture. But once you take the screenshot the resolution changes to that of the screenshot. The best option is to save the image then use it to create your custom puzzle.

Like the screenshot, another problem we see is the picture of a picture. You have an old 8×10 photograph from back in the era before digital cameras. No issue, you shoot a picture with your phone and upload it to the website. This method of transfer leads to blurry results. We prefer if you scan the original at the highest resolution possible, 600 DPI or greater. You don’t have a scanner? No problem. Most office stores (OfficeMax, Staples, etc.) offer scanning of printed photos. They will be able to take your image and create a digital file that you can create your personalized puzzle from.

Ready to Make a Puzzle from a Picture?

We are ready for you! Portrait Puzzles will turn photos into puzzles fast. Order before noon on a business day and we ship your custom puzzle the next business day. Upload you photo today!