Digital photography guide
Your guide to making the most of using high-quality photographs to enhance children's profiles.
Why quality is important
A question of dots
To get the best result
Uploading photographs
Working with photographers
Why quality is important
Photographs make a direct, emotional impact on prospective families, and the quality of the photograph plays an important part in their decision to make enquiries about the children featured in Be My Parent.
However, the pictures taken with digital cameras do not always come out well. One difficulty is that the picture you see in the camera or on a computer screen does not necessarily reproduce as you see it.
A question of dots
Put very simply, photographs are made up of a number of dots or pixels: the more pixels you have, the better the picture, and the higher the resolution, the more pixels you have.
Low-resolution photographs may look fine on screen, but are not of a high enough quality for reproduction. You may find the photograph is pixillated, i.e. made up of visible little blocks, or has unrealistic colours and patchy skin tones. A low-resolution computer file may also not contain enough ‘information’ to enable us to enlarge the image. This means the final result may be extremely poor, or much smaller than usual.
To get the best result
- Always use the highest resolution setting when taking pictures (this means you are able to take fewer pictures, but larger ones and of a far higher quality).
- Only use a good-quality camera (ideally, a minimum of 4 megapixels).
- A real, glossy photograph is best, ideally professional. School logos can be removed.
- The resolution should be a minimum of 300 dots per inch for the size of the printed photograph.
- Avoid blurred, small, obscured faces, unclear backgrounds and in appropriate clothes.
- The photo should be recent – less than six months old for children up to five years, and less than 12 months old for children of five years and above.
Uploading photographs
- Upload the pictures to the website using your agency secure log in. Contact us if your agency is not yet set up on the system.
- Make sure that you provide a high-resolution picture in JPEG format (at least 300 dpi), and that there is enough information in the JPEG by checking the file size: 250KB at least for an individual photograph or an enhanced profile, and 500KB at least for a sibling group.
- Photographs can only be uploaded as JPEGs (set as “RGB”, not “CMYK”).
Working with photographers
The press office of your agency or local authority should be able to give you details of reliable, affordable, professional photographers in your area.
Professional photographs are copyrighted to the photographer, unless an arrangement has been made to assign the rights to your agency. Please ensure that you have permission to publish the photograph in Be My Parent for one or more issues. We will assume you have obtained permission.
Last updated: 10 September 07
