More Christmas Card Photo Ideas

We’ve chosen some of our favorite new Christmas cards to illustrate how clothing choices and the use of photo filters in your Christmas card photos can dramatically change the way your cards look. (Of course, starting with one of our awesome Christmas card designs doesn’t hurt!)

If you already have your card picked out, be sure to show it to your photographer because, aside from letting him or her know the style of photo you like, it can inspire location, posing, propping or lighting ideas. Knowing whether you may want to try black and white or a photo filter is important, too. Here are some Christmas card photo ideas from our new collection we wanted to share.

Make your colors count

The red sweater, green pants and scarf on the little boy in our Merry Merry Picture Frame Christmas Cards absolutely make the photo, especially with the white snow, dog, and relatively colorless background to make the colors really pop. Similarly, the bright colors of the shirts on the kids in our Twinkle Lights Photo Book Christmas Cards match the card’s bright color palette. If you want a bright card, wearing bright clothes is one way to achieve that!

Let your card wear the colors

Another way to emphasize bright colors is use black and white photos, and frame them in a colorful card to let the holiday message stand out. To make sure your photo looks great in black and white, wear darker colors than your skin tone so faces are highlighted. And if you are starting with a color photo and adding a black and white filter, try adding the contrast & sharpen filters or the vibrance filter to intensify the lights and darks in the photo. Four examples shown, clockwise from top left: Joy Full, Sparkly Wishes, Vintage Treescape Circle and Tall Tale Christmas Cards.

Black and gold

Gold is a big color this year, and we have plenty of Holiday photo cards with gold accents, such as our Sprinkled With Gold Photo Christmas Cards and Gold Ribbon Christmas Cards. Wear black and white clothes for the photo and you’ll end up with a sophisticated and very trendy look!

Ombre family

The clothes this family is wearing match the colors found in the ombre text on the front of our Ombre Greeting Christmas Card. How did they do that? Picking your card first and planning the photo around it can have amazing results.

Accessorize

A hat, such as the one in our Colorful Dreams Christmas Cards, or even a fabric flower like the one that matches the aqua confetti in our Glitter Confetti Spinner Christmas Cards can make it look like the photo and the card were destined to be together! Keep in mind that with a lot of our cards you can change the colors to match something in your photo, too!

Photo filters

Photo apps like Instagram have made playing with photo filters mainstream. You can add a filter to intensify or emphasize certain colors to match your card, like the reddish tint on the photo in the Single Snowflake Christmas Cards shown above. When using photo filters, the color you add will be more visible over light colored clothes, and less visible over dark areas, so choose your clothing and location depending on how much you want the color to show. Our Photo Filter Christmas Card, lets you lay a solid color screen over the whole photo for more of a monochromatic look. For this effect, make sure you have enough contrast between the light and dark areas in the photo and between you and the background, that you can still see shapes and important details.