How to Choose Photos for a Memorial, Slideshow, and Book

How many photos you actually need

People tend to collect hundreds and then freeze. It helps to know the targets before you start.

• For the service display: one large portrait, plus six to twelve prints on a board or table. More than that and nobody sees any of them.
• For the program or memory card: one or two, usually a clear face and one candid.
• For a slideshow: roughly one photo per four to five seconds of music, so a four-minute song holds about 50 to 60 photos. Two songs is plenty.
• For a printed memory book: anywhere from 60 to 200, depending on length. Fewer, larger photos read better than many small ones.
• For an online memorial page: as many as you like, because guests can scroll, but lead with the best twenty.

Gather first, choose later

Make one folder on a computer or in a cloud drive and put every photo you can find into it, with no judgment. Phone camera rolls, old computer folders, shoeboxes, albums, the photos on the fridge, social media, and the pictures other people took at weddings and holidays. Do not sort while you gather; it slows you down and you will start grieving over each image instead of collecting.

Once you have a pile, go through it quickly and mark favorites with a heart or a star. Do this in two passes: a fast one where you flag anything that makes you pause, and a slower one where you pick from the flagged set. Ask one other person to do the same independently. Where your picks overlap, you have your core set.

Asking relatives for photos

Other people hold photos you have never seen, and most will be glad to be asked. Be specific about what you want and how to send it, because "send me any photos" produces either nothing or three hundred blurry screenshots.

A text or email like this works: "We are putting together photos for Dad's service and a small book. If you have any pictures of him, especially from before 1990 or from the lake, could you send the originals rather than screenshots? Even one is wonderful. Here is the link or address to send them to, and we need them by Thursday." Give a deadline that is a day or two earlier than your real one.

Ask people to send full-size files rather than forwarding through a messaging app, which shrinks them. If they only have prints, offer to scan them yourself or ask them to photograph each one in daylight using the method below. Keep a list of who sent what so you can credit them in the book and return anything physical.

Scanning old prints with a phone

You do not need a scanner. A phone camera, good light, and a little care will produce a copy that prints well at normal sizes.

Take the print out of its frame or sleeve if you can; glass causes glare. Lay it flat on a plain surface near a window in daytime, out of direct sun. Stand so your shadow does not fall on it. Hold the phone directly above, parallel to the print, and fill the frame with the photo. Tap on the face to focus. Take two or three shots and keep the sharpest. Several free scanning apps straighten and remove glare automatically, and they are worth using for a stack of prints, but the window method alone works.

For photos still in albums with sticky pages, do not peel them; photograph them in place, and tilt slightly if the plastic reflects. For slides or negatives, a local print shop can digitize them inexpensively and usually within a few days.

What prints well and what does not

A photo that looks fine on a phone screen can look soft or blocky on paper, because paper shows far more detail than a small glowing screen. Here is the plain version of what to look for.

Good candidates for print are photos taken on a camera or a recent phone, saved at their original size, and in focus on the face. Older scanned prints are usually fine for a book, since the originals were small anyway. Photos that print poorly are screenshots, images saved from social media, pictures forwarded through messaging apps, anything heavily zoomed, and night shots with grain. If you pinch to zoom on your phone and the face turns into squares or smears, it will do the same on paper.

When in doubt, use the weaker image smaller. A slightly soft photo that fills a quarter of a page looks intentional; the same photo blown up to a full page looks like a mistake. For the single large portrait at the service, choose the sharpest photo you have, not the most sentimental; the sentimental ones can go in the slideshow where softness is forgiven.

Cropping faces and framing

Cropping is the fastest way to improve a photo and the easiest way to ruin one. A few guidelines keep you safe.

Leave room above the head. Cutting off the top of the hair makes a photo feel cramped. Do not crop through the chin, the knuckles, or the elbows; crop at the chest or waist instead. If a group photo needs trimming to focus on your person, keep the shoulders of the people beside them so it does not look like they were cut out of a picture, because that is exactly what happened and it shows.

For a portrait that will be printed large, keep the original uncropped file and make the crop a copy, in case the printer needs a different shape. Vertical photos suit a portrait display and a book page; horizontal photos suit a slideshow and a screen. Do not stretch a photo to fit; it widens faces and people notice immediately, even if they cannot say why.

Choosing for each use

The service display is seen briefly by many people, so choose clear, recognizable photos across the person's life: childhood, young adult, middle years, recent. Guests who knew them at one stage will find their version of the person.

The slideshow can be more personal and can include imperfect, candid moments: laughing with mouth full, asleep in the chair, holding a fish. Order it roughly by time, with a few surprises mixed in, and end on a recent photo where they look content. Save it as a single video file rather than relying on a laptop to flip images live.

The printed book can hold the most, and it benefits from variety: faces, but also hands, places, handwriting, a favorite chair, the view from their porch. These quieter photos give the eye a rest and tell the story of a life rather than a face. Pair photos with the memories guests shared, placing a story next to the photo that fits it.

Captions, names, and order

Write down who is in each photo and roughly when it was taken while you still have relatives nearby who know. A caption as simple as "With her sister Ruth, Ohio, around 1962" turns a picture into a record. In twenty years, those three details will be the only reason anyone knows who Ruth was.

Order by time for a book and a slideshow; it gives the viewer a path. For a display board, order matters less than balance: spread the eras and mix large and small. Keep a document listing the file names, the people, and the sources, so the next family member who takes on this task starts ahead of where you did.