Can You Put a Phone Photo on a Magnet? What Resolution You Actually Need

Most of the photographs we press started life on a phone, and they turn out exactly as people hoped. Phone cameras have been more than good enough for keepsake-sized printing for years.

The thing that trips people up isn't the camera. It's what happens to a photo on the way to us.

How Much Resolution a 3.5-Inch Keepsake Needs

A 3.5-inch round keepsake needs roughly 1,050 pixels across the printed area at 300 DPI, and a little more so there's room to crop. Any recent phone photo is several times that. Even a phone from a decade ago usually clears it.

That's why we say send it and let us look — the odds are in your favor.

The Mistake That Actually Ruins Photos

Messaging apps shrink pictures to send them faster. By the time a photo has been texted, posted, screenshotted, and texted again, most of the original detail is gone — and nothing can put it back.

• Best: email the original file straight from your photo library, or share a link to it.
• Good: use your phone's share option and choose the full-size or actual-size setting if it offers one.
• Avoid: screenshots of photos, photos saved from social media, and images forwarded through several chats.
• If the photo is a print, photograph it flat in soft daylight with no flash instead of scanning it at a low setting.

What Makes a Phone Photo Print Well

Resolution is rarely the deciding factor. These are:

• Light on the face — window light beats a ceiling light every time.
• Focus on the eyes, not the background.
• A little space around the subject, so a round crop doesn't clip the top of a head.
• Faces large enough to read at keepsake size — a group shot from across a gym is the hardest kind to use.

We'll Tell You Before You Order

Send the photo and we'll look at it first. If it will print well, we'll say so. If it won't, we'll tell you why and suggest what would work better. Then you approve a proof before anything is pressed.

Your Photos. Your Moments. Your Story. We press them so they stick around.

How a 3.5-inch photo magnet becomes part of the story

Our custom photo magnets are professionally produced as 3.5-inch round keepsakes. They are big enough to actually see the faces in the picture, but small enough to belong on the refrigerator, the filing cabinet at work, or the side of a metal lamp in grandma's bedroom.

You provide the photograph. We help you make sure the resolution, the crop, and the framing honor the moment. Most people send us a phone photo or a scan of an older print, and we walk them through the rest. The keepsake itself does the work after that — quietly, every day, for years.

Across the Yakima Valley

Families across the Yakima Valley have a way of holding tight to the photographs that matter. We hear it from grandparents in Selah, from young couples in Tieton, and from churches and ministries gathering in Zillah. Wherever you live in the valley — from the orchard roads of Tieton to the riverfront in Prosser — a keepsake photo magnet can quietly carry your story from one chapter to the next.

How to start

Email tsocustomkeepsakes@gmail.com with a short note about the photograph you want to preserve and the moment behind it. We'll respond with simple next steps — how to send the image, a brief design questionnaire, and information about custom order options.

There is no shopping cart and no checkout. Every keepsake we make begins with a conversation, because every keepsake we make is built around a story.