Photographs on business cards can be very striking and make a lasting impression on your prospective customers. But the photo has to look good to make a 'good' impression.
So, how do you make sure that your photo business cards will look good, sharp and professional?
There are two main points to consider when having photo business cards printed:

1) Make sure that the printing company handling your business card order turns out top quality. We print full color glossy business cards on very heavy 14-point stock with UV coating. Our business card stock is thicker than industry standard and we're producing the highest quality that I have seen from any print company. Quality Control for our business card customers is a top priority.
2) Make sure that the photo you send or upload for your business cards is high quality and high resolution.
First and foremost it should be sharp, clear and in focus with good colors and decent lighting. For photo prints, the resolution is set at the time of scanning. For digital photos, the resolution is set when you take the photo.

A very common mistake when ordering photo business cards is to send a photo from your website.
Website images are just too small to print from. Web images are generally 72 D.P.I. (dots per inch) resolution. Printing photo business cards or other related materials requires a minimum resolution of 300 DPI. Blowing up photos (enlarging them) for business cards just doesn't work. If you double or triple the size of a photo from your website, it will look rough, out of focus and fractured on your business cards.

You'll need to have access to a large version of your photo to get the best quality from your photo business cards. You'll want the original file from the digital camera, the original photo print to scan or a large format file from the photographer that took the photo.
Another great innovation has been the option of choosing a photo CD when getting photos developed from film at your local drug store, grocery store or supermarket. These photo CDs contain large format scans of your photos and you can send the photo files straight to a printing company from the CD!
Our photo business card section offers you the ability to upload images for your photo business cards right on our website.

If you don't have any of those options, but you have a photo on your computer that you would like to use on your business cards, how do you know if it's the right format?
Answer:
First, is it sharp, clear and in focus? Secondly, how big does it appear on your screen?
Business cards are generally 2 ½ inches tall by 3 inches wide. Minimum resolution for printing business cards is 300 dpi.
So, if you want your photo to cover your business cards from top to bottom off to one side, the photo should appear 6 inches tall on your computer screen, or three times as large as the final printed business cards. You can also check the resolution of the file.

To check the resolution of a photo file on your computer, open the folder containing the file, right click on the file name and click 'properties', then 'summary' (This is for Windows 2000, your computer may differ slightly, so read on). Width and Height should be listed with a number next to them. The number represents pixels. Ideal height would be '600' pixels, the same as the business card file we print from. Bigger is better for photo business card printing, but you don't want to send anything smaller than 500 or so pixels high. We can increase the size a little, but when you blow up photo images, the start to get rough looking.
If you want photo business cards in a portrait layout (higher than wide), the height is then 1050 pixels.
If you want your photo to cover the entire background of your business cards, top to bottom and side to side, then it will need to be at least 600 x 1050 pixels.

If you send a photo about this size:
It will appear on your photo business cards about this size relative to the layout:
Click the image to the right to see an example of a photo large enough to cover the entire background of your photo business cards:
If you send a photo large enough to cover the entire background of your photo business cards, it will look similar to this: