How to Choose the Perfect Dog Photo for Embroidery

The 5-second test

Before you send us anything, hold your phone at arm's length and glance at the photo for five seconds. If you can immediately tell it's your dog — the shape of the ears, the tilt of the head, the eyes — it's a good candidate. If you have to zoom or turn the brightness up, keep looking.

1. Natural daylight beats everything

Outdoor light, near a window, or early morning golden hour. Indoor tungsten light flattens the face and loses detail in dark fur. Direct midday sun creates hard shadows that hide features. The sweet spot: overcast day outside, or 3–4 feet from a window on a bright morning.

2. Get down to their eye level

Shooting down at a dog from human height distorts their proportions — big head, tiny body. Kneel or sit. Eye level is where their character lives, and it's the angle that translates best into a line drawing.

3. Fill the frame with the face and shoulders

We're drawing a portrait, not a landscape. The dog should take up most of the frame — head, ears, chest, maybe front paws. Full-body shots taken from far away lose too much face detail once we crop in.

4. Simple background, high contrast

Plain grass, wooden floor, sofa, wall — anything that doesn't compete with the dog. A busy background (bookshelves, other pets, patterned wallpaper) makes it harder to isolate the outline cleanly. Bonus if the dog stands out from the background in tone: dark dog on light background, or vice versa.

5. Sharp focus on the eyes

If the eyes are blurry, the portrait feels lifeless. Tap on the eyes before shooting on your phone to lock focus there. Motion blur (dog shaking off, running past) is the #1 killer of an otherwise great photo.

Common mistakes we see weekly

• Screenshot of a screenshot. Send the original file from your camera roll, not a photo of your phone screen.
• Heavy filters. Skin-smoothing filters and heavy Instagram edits blur the features we need.
• Old, low-resolution photos. Anything under 1000px on the long edge starts losing definition when we work with it.
• Group shots. If you want both dogs, send one photo of each — we'll compose them together.
• Bandana / harness covering the chest. These become extra lines in the drawing. Fine if you want them; worth knowing beforehand.

What we can (and can't) fix

We can crop, adjust exposure, clean up backgrounds, and remove leashes or collars if you'd like. We can't invent detail that isn't there — blurry eyes stay blurry, and a photo that only shows one ear will only ever produce a portrait with one ear.

Not sure if your photo works? Send it anyway. We'll tell you honestly before you pay, and often we can suggest a better angle to try.