Upload the original, never a copy of a copy
The single most common way a railway print goes soft is a photograph that has been round the houses. Sent on a messaging app, saved off a forum, pulled down from social media: each of those steps re-compresses the file and throws away detail you cannot get back. Go and find the original on the camera or the phone. Viewed at full size on screen it should still look sharp - a rough first test rather than a guarantee, and the upload measures the real resolution against every size before it offers you one.
Screenshots are the worst offender, because a screenshot is only ever as big as the screen it was taken on. A phone screenshot of a photograph is a small picture of a big one.
We grade the file before you pay
Upload something and it gets measured against every option, right there, before any money is involved. Too little detail for a given piece and that piece quietly leaves the list. Nobody has to judge it by eye, and nothing arrives soft with an apology attached. The size guide holds the arithmetic and the per-size numbers.
Give the crop somewhere to go
Leave a little air around the buffers, the pantograph, the smoke and the signal post. Print formats come in fixed shapes and yours almost certainly isn't one of them, so something has to be trimmed. A photograph with a bit of room around the subject survives that; one cropped hard to the front of the loco does not, and there's nothing anybody can add back.
Think about what else is in the frame while you are there. A station nameboard, a shed plate, a platform number: those often carry the whole story of the day, and they are easy to lose to a crop nobody thought about.
Level it before you upload
A tilt you wouldn't notice on a phone becomes obvious the moment there is a frame edge next to it, because the frame gives the eye a straight line to compare against. Straighten the horizon, or the platform edge, or the rail. It is the cheapest improvement on this page.
If you want the file rather than the object
Every custom product here carries a digital download alongside the physical ones. You get the finished artwork emailed to you at full print resolution and the link stays live for thirty days, so it is the option for somebody who wants to print locally, frame it themselves, or simply have the picture. There is nothing to post, so nothing to wait for.
What to read next
Two pages finish this stage. The studio styles covers what each treatment does to a photograph and which pictures suit which. The size guide takes your file and works out how large it can honestly go. Both sit under your photograph, which is the stage this page belongs to.
If the picture is already exactly what you want on the wall, you don't need either of them. Send it through as it is.
Written by Craig Fearn, Trackside Prints. Last updated .
