How to Take Perfect Photos for Your Custom Photo Magnets

The difference between a good photo magnet and a great one almost always comes down to the photo you start with. The good news: you don't need a DSLR or a professional shoot. You just need to know a few simple rules.

Resolution: The Most Important Factor

Custom photo magnets are printed at 1200 DPI — so a low-resolution image will look blurry or pixelated on the final product. For a sharp, vibrant result, use an image that's at least 1000×1000 pixels. Most smartphone photos taken in the last five years will easily meet this requirement — modern iPhones and Android devices shoot at 12 megapixels or higher, which is far more than enough.

Avoid screenshots, heavily compressed social media downloads, or small thumbnails. Download the original file directly from your phone or camera wherever possible.

Composition: Centre Your Subject

Since magnets are square (2×2 inches), you'll be cropping your photo into a 1:1 ratio. Images where the subject is centred in the frame — or occupies the middle third — crop beautifully. Wide landscape shots or panoramas tend to lose their impact when cropped to square.

Portrait-oriented photos of faces work especially well — close-up shots of people, pets, and babies tend to make the most emotional and visually striking magnets.

Lighting: Natural Is Best

Photos taken in good natural light always print better than those taken in dim indoor environments. Outdoor shots, window-lit portraits, and golden-hour photos tend to have richer colours and finer detail — exactly what you want when printing at a small scale.

Avoid photos where faces appear dark, blurry, or heavily shadowed. Our printing process is faithful to the original image, so it won't rescue a poorly lit photo.

Using Our In-App Editing Tools

When you upload your photo at Snapstic, you can adjust:

• Brightness and contrast — brighten a slightly dark shot or add punch to a flat image
• Saturation — boost colours for a vibrant look, or reduce for a muted, film-style result
• Zoom and pan — position exactly the right part of your photo within the square crop
• Filters — choose from Vivid, Warm, Cool, Black & White, Faded, or Vintage to set a mood

Best Photo Types for Custom Magnets

• Close-up portraits of people or pets
• Action shots with a clear, centred subject
• Holiday photos taken outdoors in good light
• Milestone moments — birthdays, graduations, newborns
• Candid shots with genuine emotion

Photos to Avoid

• Wide-angle group shots where faces are small
• Screenshots or social media thumbnails
• Night photos without adequate lighting
• Heavily filtered exports (double-filtering can look unnatural in print)

Our upload tool accepts JPEG, PNG, and WebP files up to 10MB. When in doubt, upload your highest-resolution original and let the in-app crop tool do the rest.