WILL THE PHOTO WORK?
Of all the questions we get, the one that comes up most often isn't about metals or sizing or shipping times. It's this: Will my photo work?
People worry about this more than almost anything else. They have a photo they love — a grandmother at a birthday party, a dog mid-zoomie, a daughter at graduation — and they're not sure if it's good enough. Too old. Too small. Taken on a flip phone in 2007.
Here's what we want you to know before we get into anything else: we have worked with a lot of photos. Scanned prints from the 1940s. Screenshots of screenshots. Photos where the person you love is small in the frame and the background is a crowded restaurant. We've seen it all, and most of the time, we can make something beautiful.
That said, the right photo does make a difference. This post will help you understand what we look for, what to do if your best photo isn't perfect, and how to give your locket the best possible chance of taking your breath away when you open it.
LOCKET
DESIGN
This is something most people don't think about, but it genuinely matters — the shape of the locket determines the shape of the photo, and some photos fit certain shapes much better than others.
Round and oval lockets are beautiful for portrait-oriented images: faces looking straight ahead, a pet in close-up, a classic portrait. The circular frame draws the eye right to the center of the image, which works best when your subject(s) is centered and close.
Heart lockets are forgiving and warm. They work especially well for faces — something about a face inside a heart just feels right. Avoid images where the most important detail is in the very bottom point of the heart, as it tends to get lost. Two heads work well in a heart as the top of the heart cuts in just between the two hairlines.
Square lockets give you the most flexibility. They work well for group photos, landscapes, or any photo where you want a bit of context around the subject — a kitchen table, a favorite place, a moment captured wide.
Open pendant lockets (where the photo is always visible, not hidden behind a clasp) deserve extra thought, because the photo is always on display. Choose something you'd be happy for anyone to see — and something that reads clearly even at a glance.
If you're choosing a locket and you already have a specific photo in mind, let the photo help you decide the shape. It works better that way around than choosing the locket first and hoping the photo fits.
Photo Resolution for Lockets
You might be wondering whether your photo needs to be high resolution to work in a locket. The honest answer is: it helps, but it matters less than you'd think.
Lockets are tiny. The image inside most of our lockets is often only about the size of a dime. At that scale, a little softness or pixelation that would bother you on a phone screen or a printed photo often disappears entirely — your eye fills in the details, especially when the photo is of someone you know and love.
So if the photo you have is a screenshot, a slightly blurry candid, or an image pulled from an old text thread — that's okay. If it's the photo that makes you feel something, it's worth sending to us. We'd rather work with a meaningful photo at a so-so resolution than a technically perfect photo that doesn't capture the sentiment.
That said, if you have a choice between two similar photos, go with the crisper one. And if you're not sure whether your photo is good enough, just send it over — we'll always tell you honestly whether it'll work, and we can often do more with an imperfect image than you'd expect.
Get close to the face (or whatever you love most)
Lockets are intimate objects. They're worn against your body, opened quietly and privately. The photos that feel most powerful inside them are the ones where you can really see the person — their expression, their eyes, the particular way they smiled.
When a face is small in the frame — standing far away, surrounded by a big crowd, photographed from across a room — that intimacy gets lost. At locket scale, a face that was already small in the original photo can become almost unreadable.
What to do: Before you send your photo, crop in. You don't need special software — your phone's built-in photo editor works perfectly. Get the face or the subject as large as you comfortably can while still keeping what matters. If you're not sure how to do this, just send us the original and tell us which person or area to focus on, and we'll crop it for you.
One thing people sometimes forget: you don't have to use the whole photo. A wide group shot might have one incredible close-up of a face hiding inside it. We crop and isolate that kind of thing all the time.
Group Photos in a Locket: What to Know
We get a lot of group photos, and we love them. Families, best friends, siblings, wedding parties. The joy in those images is real and worth preserving.
A few things to keep in mind:
The more people in the frame, the smaller each face will be. A photo of two people in a double-photo locket reads beautifully. Six people in a single locket will be very small. That's not necessarily a dealbreaker — sometimes the feeling of a group photo matters more than seeing every face in perfect detail — but it's worth knowing what to expect.
Our suggestion for groups: If you have four or more people you want to include, consider a double photo locket. You can split the group across both sides, or put a group shot on one side and a close-up of one special person on the other. It gives each image room to breathe.
Using old or printed photos in a locket
Some of the most meaningful photos are the oldest ones. The ones that exist only in print form, that have lived in a box or a wallet or a frame for decades.
These absolutely can work — and when they do, they're often our favorites.
The key is getting a good digital version of the print. Here's how:
Scanning is the best option if you have access to a scanner. Scan at 300 DPI or higher and save as a JPEG or PNG, not a PDF. Most public libraries have scanners available for free.
Photographing the print works surprisingly well if you do it carefully. Lay the photo flat on a white surface near a window with natural light (but not direct sunlight, which creates glare). Hold your phone directly above the photo, parallel to it, and take the shot. Make sure the whole photo is in frame with minimal border. Avoid using flash.
If the print is damaged — faded, scratched, creased — send it to us anyway and let us take a look. We can often work with more than you'd expect, and we'll always tell you honestly if something isn't going to translate well.
What about pet photos for a locket?
We make a lot of pet lockets, and we are not even a little bit sorry about it.
Pet photos have one particular challenge: animals rarely hold still for a camera, which means a lot of pet photos are slightly blurry, or taken at an awkward angle, or have the face half-turned. The tips above still apply, especially getting close and cropping in — but for pets, one additional tip: look for a photo where the eyes are in focus. Even if the rest of the image is a little soft, a pet photo with sharp, clear eyes will feel alive inside a locket.
Our photo preview tool
Before you finalize your order, we'd encourage you to try our Locket Photo Preview Tool. You can upload your photo and see roughly how it will look inside the locket shape you're considering. It's one of our favorite things on the site, and it answers a lot of "will this work?" questions before they become worries.
When in doubt, just ask us
This is genuinely our favorite part of the job — talking through photos with people before they order. We can look at what you have, tell you whether it'll work, suggest a crop, or help you decide between two options.
We're real people in a real studio in Minneapolis, and we answer our own messages. If you're unsure about your photo, reach out. We'd much rather have that conversation than have you receive your locket and wish you'd used a different image.
Send us a message at [your contact link or email here], or just add a note when you place your order.
Ready to see how your photo looks? Try our Locket Photo Preview Tool — then browse the full collection when you're ready to order.
Want more guidance before you buy? Read Your Complete Guide to Buying a Locket for everything from metal types to sizing.