What kind of picture do I need from you?

So, you'd like me to digitally remaster a picture for you. To do that, I need a picture from you, of the subject (usually yourself), to work from. What kind of picture do you need to send me?

Well,the short answer is that I can work with just about anything. But there are a number of considerations to bear in mind.

Size of Image

Modern cameras (yes, even the ones in inexpensive phones) take stupendously big pictures, spanning several thousand pixels in width and height. Social networking sites' avatars are typically between 40 and 200 pixels square, and the banners on Facebook and Google+ are less than 1000 pixels across. The first thing I will probably do to any image that you send me is to scale it down considerably, so don't worry about size.

At least, this is the case with images intended to be viewed on a screen. If you're commissioning a digital portrait to be printed on a 8ft-wide canvas, or even a standard printed portrait, then we'll discuss image size requirements.

Picture Quality

Cellphones and cheap cameras can be very good at taking poor quality pictures of people - grainy, washed out, etc. etc. In general, this isn't a problem for me, as most of the techniques I use will alter the finish of the final image. So long as the shape of your face is recognizable in the picture, I can create something that looks good from a photo that doesn't look very good.

Framing & Composition

If you want a picture of your entire face, unobscured, then don't send a picture where half your head is obscured by a friend's elbow, beer glass, toy dog, or whatever. (If you do want an extreme closeup of one eye and half your nose, or half your face hidden by someone else's elbow,then that's fine, I can work with that too!)

Ownership & Permission

You need to be the owner of images that you send me, and you need to have the permission of the person who's photo it is you're sending. I can't create derivative works from copyrighted material.

I don't need written permission from your subject - this might give the game away if you're organising a surprise present for example -and over the internet, I can't really tell if it's a picture of you or not anyway, can I?

In any event, by ordering a picture from this service, you are deemed to have verified that you have the right to use any images that you send me.