Headstone Photo Engraving Tips

At St. Charles Monuments, a Long Island Headstone and Monument Company, we create custom headstones and memorials, tailored to fit your needs. We understand this can be a difficult time for you and we will be here through every step. We want to make the process of picking your memorials stone, color, scriptures and photographs, as easy as possible. Many of our clients choose to have photos of the person engraved into their monument to honor their loved ones. This can help preserve memories and add to the memorials look. When choosing a photo to be engraved, it’s important to choose the right quality photos, so you can have the best engraving possible.

What should I consider before choosing a photo?

• The best images to use for a headstone engraving, are photos taken from a camera. Typically, high pixel photos that are even toned, take best to a headstone. Most smart phones are high enough in pixels to take adequate photos.

• Make sure you’re satisfied with the persons appearance in the image. This includes what their wearing, facial expressions and anything else that may be of importance to you. Keep in mind these photos are permanently engraved into the headstone so careful consideration is suggested.

• We do not recommended to take a picture of a picture because the quality of the image is at risk and tends to not be sharp enough to properly engrave.

• It’s best to choose your photo prior to having other contents engraved to your stone. Although it’s possible to engrave a photo later its easier to incorporate the stones design with all components.

St. Charles Monuments and memorials, also retouches older images, to restore quality and make sure they look as nice as possible. Modern technology allows us to restore older images and have them engraved onto most types of stone.

What happens after I choose a photo?

Once you’ve decided the photo you’d like engraved onto the stone, you can send them over for approval. As soon as we receive the photos, we’ll scan them into the computer and add them to your headstones design. After all elements of the headstone are added to your design, (names, dates, epitaphs) we’ll send you a proof to see how the finished product will look. Once your completely satisfied with the design, we are ready to create the memorial. The process of engraving a photo onto your headstone, begins by converting the design into a format our laser machine can comprehend. Next the laser machine will burn the surface of the stone permanently, to create impressions of the names and images. After the laser function is completed, we polish the headstone and prepare it to be shipped off.

If your having trouble deciding which quality photo would look better engraved, feel free to email us your options. You can also contact us with any other questions you may have. We’re open 7 days a week and located less than a hundred feet from the Wellwood Cemetery, of West Babylon, New York.