Preparing a memorial photo for a funeral or service

The right picture is almost always the one the family already loves — the face everyone recognises, taken on an ordinary day. The practical questions are different from the emotional ones. Look at a few candidates side by side on a laptop or tablet and judge each one on three things.

• Face. The eyes are open, in focus, and the expression is one the family wants remembered. A gentle, natural look reads better at a large size than a wide staged smile.
• Light. Even light on the face, no harsh shadow across one eye, no deep squint into the sun. Backlight (a bright window behind the head) is the hardest to fix.
• Size on the frame. The head and shoulders fill a good part of the picture. A tiny face in a group shot can be cropped, but every crop throws pixels away.

If two photos are close, pick the sharper one. A soft, blurry original can be gently sharpened and tidied, but detail that was never captured cannot be invented without changing the person's face.

Tip: A phone screenshot of a social-media picture is usually the worst version of a photo you own somewhere else. Ask the family first — the full-size original is often in someone's camera roll or on an old laptop.

If the photo is already digital, copy the full-resolution file off the phone or camera — not a messaging-app version, which is heavily compressed. If it is a print, you have two options.

• A flatbed scanner at 600 dpi for a standard print, saved as TIFF or high-quality JPEG. This is the gentlest option for an old print and the best for enlargements.
• A phone, held straight above the print in soft daylight away from direct sun. Our guide to scanning old photos with a phone walks through light, angle and apps step by step.

Handle the print by its edges with clean, dry hands and keep it off the kitchen table — the Library of Congress and NEDCC both recommend a clean, flat work surface and holding photographs by the edges to avoid fingerprints on the image side. Keep the original flat; don't bend it to fit a scanner.

Tip: Capture once, well, before you start editing. Every subsequent copy, crop or screenshot is a copy of a copy.

Most memorial photos pull from decades of family history, and the originals show their age: faded colour, small scratches from an album, a crease along the top edge. On a digital copy, those are routine fixes.

• Fading and yellowing. Rebuild contrast and tone on a copy — never on the original print. See how to fix a faded photo for the step-by-step.
• Scratches and dust. Remove them from a clean scan rather than from a reshoot — a scan picks up less reflection. How to remove scratches covers the healing-brush and AI approaches.
• Creases and small folds. Flatten the print safely under books and remove the crease line from the copy. How to fix a creased photo explains why the line stays on the paper and how to lose it on the file.
• Black and white or colour. If the family wants a colour version, generate it from the restored black-and-white file and keep both. See colorize black and white photos.

CreaseFix is built for this: upload the capture, run Studio restore for a careful face-safe repair, and compare before and after with a slider. Nothing happens to the physical print — only a digital copy is edited. Keep the untouched original scan too; a conservator may want it later, and future tools will improve.

A memorial often needs the same face at several sizes within a day or two. Plan the sizes before you print anything.

• Easel enlargement, 8×10 or 11×14 inches. Aim for about 300 pixels per inch at the final size — so 2,400 × 3,000 pixels for 8×10 and 3,300 × 4,200 for 11×14. A clear phone photo or a 600 dpi scan of a 4×6 print usually has enough resolution; a tiny thumbnail will not.
• Larger easel, 16×20 inches. 4,800 × 6,000 pixels is the comfortable target. If your file is smaller, print at a size it supports instead of upscaling into mush.
• Slideshow at a service. Full HD (1,920 × 1,080) is enough on most screens; 4K (3,840 × 2,160) is better on a modern television. Export each photo once at the slideshow's native size.
• Keepsake cards, bookmarks, programs. 300 dpi at the final paper size; your printer will accept the same large file as the enlargement.

Finish with a crop that leaves a little room above the head and does not clip chin or shoulders. If several family members will carry a copy, print one extra of each size — a bookmark goes missing in a day.

Most families have 48 to 72 hours between loss and service. The order below fits inside a single evening and leaves room for a printer's next-day turnaround.

1. Hour one: pick two or three candidates with the family and choose one.
2. Hour two: scan or re-photograph the original, carefully, once. Save the raw file somewhere safe before anything else.
3. Hour three: repair fading and small damage on a copy. Produce a black-and-white and an optional colour version. Compare them with the family.
4. Hour four: export the sizes you need (enlargement, slideshow, keepsake) and send them to the printer and to whoever is making the slideshow.

If the print is torn, water-damaged or very fragile, start earlier and be ready to use a smaller or less-ideal face if the restore cannot be finished in time. For badly damaged originals, see restore water-damaged photos and repair a torn photo. A one-of-a-kind, flaking or brittle print belongs with a photograph conservator; a good digital copy still gets you a photo on the easel.