The program
The photograph on the order of service.
This is the piece people carry out of the service and find in a drawer eleven years later. It is also the one most often designed in a hurry, on a laptop, at midnight.
The short answer
The cover panel of a standard letter sheet folded in half is 5.5 × 8.5 inches, which needs 1650 × 2550 pixels at 300 ppi. Almost any photograph will do that, including a phone snap. The things that actually go wrong here are the fold, the bleed, and printing it at 72 dpi by exporting from a design tool with the wrong setting.
01 · FormatsThree formats, three different panels.
| Format | Sheet | Finished | Pixels for cover photo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bi-fold, letter | 8.5 × 11 in | 5.5 × 8.5 in | 1650 × 2550 |
| Bi-fold, tabloid | 11 × 17 in | 8.5 × 11 in | 2550 × 3300 |
| Flat card | 5 × 7 in | 5 × 7 in | 1500 × 2100 |
| Booklet, stapled | 8.5 × 11 in | 5.5 × 8.5 in | 1650 × 2550 |
Most services use the first. Ask the printer which one they are producing before you design anything, because the panel shape changes where the face sits.
02 · The foldKeep the face away from the fold and the trim.
Two mechanical facts decide whether the photograph looks considered or accidental.
The fold. A bi-fold program has a crease down the middle at 5.5 inches from the sheet edge. If the design puts the photograph across the centre of the sheet, that crease runs down the face. It is one of the most common and most avoidable mistakes in a self-designed order of service. Put the photograph entirely within one panel.
The trim. The printer trims the sheet to size after printing, usually to within a millimetre or two of where they said. If the photograph runs to the edge of the panel, that trim can shave the top of a head. Leave a margin — or supply the file with the bleed the printer asks for, which is normally an extra ⅛ inch on each edge, and accept that a sliver of the image will be cut away.
If you are designing this yourself in a browser tool or a design app, ask the printer for a template. Every reputable print shop has one, it is already the right size with the right bleed, and using it removes most of this page's problems in one download.
03 · The fileThe export setting that ruins a good photograph.
The photograph can be superb and the program still come out soft, because of one number in the export dialog. Design tools export for screens by default, which means 72 ppi and a colour profile for a monitor. For print you want:
- 300 ppi at the final size, not "high quality" as a preset.
- The PDF, not a JPEG — print shops prefer PDF and it will not re-compress.
- CMYK if the printer asks for it, RGB if they accept it. Ask; do not guess. A photograph exported the wrong way can shift colour, and skin tone is where it shows.
- Embedded fonts or outlined text, if you are setting the service details yourself.
If you are handing over a template the printer fills in, this is their problem and not yours. If you are making the whole thing, it is worth exporting a single test page and asking them to check it before the run.
04 · What to put on itOne photograph, or several.
The front cover takes one photograph. The back cover can take a small group of them — three or four across a life — and the inside panels are usually for the order of service itself, an obituary, a poem, a photograph of the two of them, or nothing at all.
The temptation is to fill every panel with photographs, and the result is a program that looks like a scrapbook and reads as a document with no hierarchy. One strong cover photograph, and a small cluster on the back, is the arrangement that most often looks deliberate.
The cover should be the same photograph as the easel, or at least the same era. A program showing someone at thirty and an easel showing them at eighty is a jarring combination at the door of the same room.
Questions people ask at this point.
What size should the photo be on a funeral program?
For a standard letter sheet folded to 5.5 x 8.5 inches, the cover panel needs 1650 x 2550 pixels at 300 ppi. For a tabloid sheet folded to 8.5 x 11, it needs 2550 x 3300.
Should the photo go on the front or the back?
Front. The cover is what identifies the service, and a program without a photograph on the front is usually a program where nobody had a suitable file. Small photographs on the back cover work well as a cluster, but one image on the front.
Can I print the order of service at home?
For a small service, yes, if you have a decent colour printer and matte photo paper. For anything over about thirty copies the cost and the quality both argue for a print shop, and the shop will fold and trim it as well, which is the part that is hard to do neatly yourself.
Why does the photo look soft when the program is printed?
Almost always because the design was exported at screen resolution, 72 ppi, rather than 300 ppi at final size. The other common cause is exporting a JPEG at maximum compression, which re-compresses the photograph and softens fine detail.
The photograph people will keep
The cover image is the piece that gets kept, so it is worth having the file repaired properly. Pinin fixes fading, casts, dust and creases without changing the face, first one free.
Repair the cover photograph