How to Choose the Best Photo for a Memorial Portrait
You may be sitting with a phone that holds four thousand photos of them, unable to decide. Or you may have seven, total, and none of them taken with any of this in mind — because nobody photographs their dog thinking this will be the one we paint.
Both of these are normal. We see both every week.
This guide is here to make the choice easier, not heavier. There is only one thing that genuinely matters, a handful of things that help, and a long list of things people worry about that turn out not to matter at all.
The short answer. Open the photo and zoom all the way in on one eye. If you can still see a catchlight and the edge of the pupil, that photo will make a portrait. If the eye dissolves into a soft smudge, no artist can put it back. Almost everything else people apologize for — the messy kitchen, the collar, the old phone, the stranger’s hand in the frame — we can work with.
That’s the whole test. The rest of this page is why it works, what else helps, what we can and can’t repair, and what to do when all you have left is a video.
The eyes decide everything
A memorial portrait either gives you the feeling of being looked at by them again, or it doesn’t. Everything else — the coat, the ears, the tilt of the head — is craft. The eyes are the whole reason you’re commissioning a painting instead of printing a photo.
So here is the single test that matters more than every other guideline on this page:
Open the photo on your phone. Pinch to zoom all the way in on one eye. Is there detail there — a catchlight, a ring of color, an edge to the pupil? Or does it dissolve into a soft dark smudge?
If there’s detail, our artist has something to paint from. If it dissolves, no amount of skill puts it back — an artist working from a blurred eye is inventing a stranger’s eye, and you will feel it the moment the painting arrives, even if you can’t name why.
That’s the test. If a photo passes it, it is probably a good photo. Read on for the rest.
Six things that help
We deliberately don’t publish a list of photo requirements. A rule like must be 12 megapixels would turn away photos that make beautiful paintings and wave through ones that don’t. So none of the following are requirements — they’re how to choose when you’re holding two photos and can’t decide.
1. Light from a window, not a flash
Soft daylight from the side wraps around the face and shows you the shape of the head, the depth of the fur, the wetness of the eye. Direct flash does the opposite: it flattens everything into a mask, blows out white fur, and turns eyes into hard red or green discs.
If you’re choosing between two photos and one was taken near a window, take that one.
2. Taken at their eye level
A photo shot from standing height, looking down, gives you a lot of forehead and very little soul. A photo taken from the floor, at their level, is the one that looks like a portrait. It’s the difference between looking at them and being with them.
3. A three-quarter angle
Straight-on is fine. Full profile is beautiful for some pets. But the angle that most often produces a portrait people cry over is the three-quarter turn — head angled slightly away, both eyes still visible, one ear a little forward. It gives the face dimension.
4. In focus on the face
Blur in the body, blur in the background, a paw out of frame — none of that matters. Blur across the face does. Motion blur, in particular, cannot be undone.
5. They fill a decent part of the frame — but weren’t shot from an inch away
A photo where your pet is a small figure across the room contains very little face, no matter how many megapixels it has. Zooming in later just enlarges the blur.
The opposite extreme is its own problem: a phone held right against a nose exaggerates it, pushes the eyes back, and narrows the skull. It’s charming as a snapshot and misleading as a reference — and once that distortion is in the file, painting from it faithfully means painting a slightly wrong animal.
Between two photos, choose the one taken from a step or two away where the head still fills a good part of the frame.
6. The original file, if you still have it
Send the photo straight from your camera roll rather than a screenshot, a text-message forward, or a download from someone’s Instagram post. Each of those quietly throws away detail, and a social-media copy can hold a small fraction of what the original held. If the original is on an old laptop or an SD card, it’s worth the search.
If the original is genuinely gone — the phone was lost, the account was deleted, the only copy is a photo of a framed print on the wall — say so when you order. It’s a common situation and it isn’t a dead end. It just changes how we work.
What people worry about, and shouldn’t
Almost everyone who writes to us apologizes for their photo. Almost none of them need to. Here is what does not disqualify a photo:
- A messy background. The kitchen floor, the vet’s waiting room, a stranger’s legs, a laundry pile. We paint the background you choose — a soft studio tone, a warm interior, a suggestion of grass — not the one in the file.
- A collar, harness, leash, or cone. Removable. So is a tag, a bandana, or a lick mat in the corner of the frame.
- Another pet or a person in the shot. We can paint one, or both, or lift your pet out entirely.
- It was taken on an old phone. A well-lit photo from a 2016 phone beats a badly lit one from this year’s flagship, every time.
- They aren’t posed. Mid-yawn, mid-zoomie, sprawled and undignified — if the eyes are there and the light is good, that’s a portrait.
- It’s the last photo you took. Many of our portraits come from photos taken in the final week, at home, on a blanket. They are often the ones with the most in them.
What we can fix, and what no one can
Being honest about this saves you a disappointment later.
| We can fix | No one can fix |
|---|---|
| Background, floor, furniture, other people | Eyes that are out of focus or lost in shadow |
| Collar, harness, leash, tags, cone | Motion blur across the face |
| Cluttered edges, cropped-off body (built from a second photo) | Direct flash that has erased all facial contour |
| Color cast — the yellow of a kitchen light, the blue of a phone screen | A face turned so far away that one eye is fully hidden |
| Mild grain or low resolution, if the eyes hold detail | A screenshot of a screenshot, or a phone photo of a printed photo, when it’s the only source |
| Adding a body, a favorite toy, a background from your memory rather than any file | Detail on a black or very dark coat photographed in a dark room — there is nothing recorded to paint |
Underneath that table is one simple rule that governs everything we do:
We paint what the photograph shows. Anything you want changed — removed, softened, kept — just tell us, and it costs nothing.
Dark coats, pale coats, and faces that hide their eyes
Coat color changes what a “good” photo even means, and this is where the most portraits get held up.
Black and very dark coats need light on them. A black cat or a black lab photographed indoors in the evening produces a silhouette — the file contains an outline and almost nothing else, so there is no fur direction, no muscle, no gloss to paint. If you have several photos to choose from, choose the one taken outdoors in open shade or beside a bright window, even if you like another one better as a picture. It will make a dramatically better painting. A lighter background behind them helps too: it separates the edge of the coat from the room.
White and cream coats have the opposite problem. In direct sun they blow out — the fur turns into a flat white shape with no shadow and no texture. For pale pets, overcast daylight or shade is far better than a sunny afternoon.
Some faces hide their eyes. Dark-faced breeds, heavy eyebrows, long fringes, and flat-faced cats and dogs all make the eyes hard for a camera to record. For them, the light needs to be in front of the face rather than behind it, and a slight profile often reveals more than a straight-on shot.
Videos, screenshots, and old printed photos
Three sources people assume are unusable, and often aren’t.
A frame from a video is frequently the best thing you have. If your pet has already died, your videos may hold expressions no still photo caught. Individual frames are lower-resolution than a photo, but they’re often sharp enough for a portrait — and they’re often the last honest look at them.
Don’t screenshot the video and send the screenshot. Send us the video file itself, and we’ll go through it frame by frame and pull the best one. That’s part of our work, not yours. If your pet is a Live Photo on an iPhone, that’s a short video too — send it the same way.
Old printed photographs work. Photograph or scan the print flat in daylight — no flash, no angle, and take it out of the frame if you can, because glass reflects. Send the largest file your phone or scanner produces.
Screenshots are a last resort, not a disqualification. A screenshot of a compressed social post is the weakest possible source. But if it’s genuinely all that exists, send it. We’ll tell you honestly whether it holds enough.
One practical note on sending. Messaging apps and some email clients shrink photos automatically, sometimes to a tenth of their original size, and a shrunk file can’t be un-shrunk. When your phone offers a choice of image size, choose the largest one. If you’re sending several, a shared album, a cloud-drive link, or a file-transfer service preserves them intact.
As they were at the end, or as they were before?
This one deserves a sentence of thought, because it is a real choice and nobody warns you about it.
A photo from the last months is often the most emotionally right one, and it may also show a grey muzzle, cloudy eyes, thinner shoulders, a scar, a shaved patch from a catheter. A photo from three years earlier shows the animal you carry in your head.
There is no correct answer. Some families want exactly the face they said goodbye to. Others want the version that ran. Many want the late-life photo, with the grey left in — because the grey was earned and taking it out would make it someone else.
What we won’t do is quietly decide for you. We paint what the photo shows, including the grey and the cloud and the notch in the ear, unless you tell us otherwise. And if you’d like the muzzle softened, the tear stains eased, or a healthier weight from an earlier photo, say so — it costs nothing and it’s your portrait, not ours.
Send more than one
The best commissions almost always start with three photos rather than one:
- The hero. The one whose eyes and expression you want in the finished painting. This is the photo we paint.
- A coat reference. Any well-lit shot that shows their markings clearly — where the white patch actually sits, how the brindle runs, the exact shade of their ears in daylight. Phone cameras shift color badly, and one honest reference keeps us from painting a slightly wrong dog.
- A detail you’d notice if it were missing. The crooked whisker. The notch in the ear. The one grey eyebrow. The scar on the nose. Send us the photo that shows it, and tell us it matters.
Then tell us, in a sentence, what you want people to feel when they look at the finished painting. He always looked like he was about to say something. She was dignified and knew it. That sentence changes brushwork in ways no photo can specify.
And if choosing is the part you can’t face right now — send everything you have and let us do the choosing. Nobody has ever sent us too many photos.
What your photo means for the size you choose
A portrait enlarges everything, including what isn’t there.
A photo with real detail in the face will carry any size we offer. A softer, older, or lower-resolution photo will look wonderful at a smaller size and start to show its limits at a large one, because a big canvas asks for detail the file never recorded.
So if the only photo you have is a marginal one, we’ll usually suggest a smaller portrait rather than talk you into a larger one. It’s the honest recommendation, and it’s the one that hangs better. You can see the sizes we work in on the Classic Realism portrait page.
If they’re still with you
If you’re reading this while your pet is in hospice, or simply old and slowing down, and you’re thinking about a portrait for later — take the photos this week. Not to rush anything. Because the photos taken now, deliberately, will be better than anything in your camera roll, and there will not be a better time.
It takes ten minutes:
- Wipe the phone lens on your shirt first. It’s cloudier than you think.
- Take them to the biggest window in the house, or just outside the door in open shade. No flash, ever.
- Get down on the floor. All the way down, so the phone is level with their eyes.
- Tap the screen on their eye before you shoot. That tells the phone to focus there rather than on the nose, which is what it will otherwise do.
- Stand a step or two back and use the zoom to fill the frame, rather than pushing the phone into their face.
- Make a soft sound they’ll turn toward, then hold the shutter down for a burst. Take thirty. Take a hundred.
- Shoot from both sides and slightly above and below, so you have options later.
- Then take a few where their whole body is in frame, and a few close on the face.
Don’t try to get the perfect shot. Get many honest ones. You’ll pick later, when you’re ready, and you’ll be grateful the choice exists.
The short version
Send it if:
- Zoomed all the way in, one eye still shows detail
- The face is lit — daylight, a window, open shade
- It was taken at roughly their eye level
- The head fills a reasonable part of the frame
- It’s the original file, not a forward of a forward
- It looks like them, in the way you mean when you say that
Choose another if:
- The eyes are soft, shadowed, or hidden behind a fringe
- The whole face is motion-blurred
- A flash has flattened the face into a white mask
- A dark coat has gone completely black with no fur detail
- Their head is turned so far that one eye is gone
- It’s a screenshot of a screenshot — and something closer to the original exists
Not sure? That’s what we’re for. Send it anyway.
Before anyone picks up a brush, we look at your photo
You don’t have to get this right alone.
Every photo sent to us is reviewed by a person — not software — before the commission begins. If the file will make a beautiful painting, we say so and start. If it won’t, we tell you plainly, explain exactly what the problem is, and go through your other options with you. If nothing in your library works, we’ll say that too, and you won’t be charged for a portrait we don’t believe in.
Nothing is painted, and nothing is final, until you’ve seen and approved the work in progress. You can read the whole sequence in what happens after you order.
Frequently asked questions
What resolution does my photo need to be?
There is no strict number. What matters is whether the eyes hold detail when you zoom in — a 4-megapixel photo taken in good window light is more useful than a 48-megapixel one taken in a dark room. If you’re unsure, send it and we’ll tell you before you commit.
How do I send photos without losing quality?
Send the original file from your camera roll rather than a screenshot or a re-share. Messaging apps compress heavily; when your phone offers a choice of image size, pick the largest. For several photos, a shared album, a cloud-drive link, or a file-transfer service keeps them intact.
Can you use a still from a video?
Yes, and for pets who have already died it’s often the best remaining source. Send us the video file rather than a screenshot of it, and we’ll go through it frame by frame to find the strongest moment. An iPhone Live Photo counts as a video for this purpose.
Can you paint from an old printed photograph?
Often, yes. Photograph or scan the print flat in daylight — no flash, no angle, and out of the frame if you can, since glass reflects — and send the largest file your phone or scanner produces. We’ll tell you honestly what’s possible before starting.
My only photos are blurry. Is a portrait still possible?
Sometimes. If the blur is in the body or the background, absolutely. If the eyes themselves are soft, an artist would have to invent them, and we would rather tell you that than take the commission. Send what you have and we’ll look.
My pet was black and every photo looks like a shadow. Is there anything you can do?
Choose the photo with the most light on the face, even if you prefer another one as a picture — outdoors in shade, or beside a window, with something lighter behind them. If every photo is a silhouette, there’s no fur detail recorded for an artist to work from, and we’ll tell you that rather than guess.
Can you combine two photos — one pet’s face, another’s pose?
Yes. Combining sources is routine: a face from one photo, a body from another, a background from neither. We can also paint two pets together who were never photographed together, including one who is already gone.
Can you remove the collar, leash, or a person in the photo?
Yes, all of it, at no additional cost. Tell us what you want kept — some families specifically want the worn red collar in the painting — and we’ll keep it.
Should the portrait show them young, or as they were at the end?
Whichever is the one you carry. We paint what the photo shows, grey muzzle and all, unless you ask us to soften it. Many families keep the grey deliberately; others choose a photo from years earlier. Both are right, and neither costs more.
How many photos should I send?
Three is the ideal shape: one you love for the expression, one that shows their markings honestly in daylight, and one that shows the detail you’d notice if it were missing. If choosing feels impossible right now, send everything and we’ll choose with you.