How to Prepare a Photo or Logo for Printing

Screenshots, social media saves and messaging app downloads all shrink and re-compress an image before it ever reaches you. A badge that looks perfectly fine on your phone can be a fraction of its original quality by the time it lands in your camera roll.

If you have the choice between the file a mate sent you and the original from the club shop, a designer or the club's press page, always ask for the original. It costs nothing to ask, and it is the single biggest improvement you can make to a printed flag.

PNG and JPEG are the two safest formats to upload, and WebP works well too. If the file you have is anything else — a GIF, an SVG, or a screenshot saved in an unusual format — convert it to PNG first. Some tools will handle that conversion for you, but doing it yourself removes any doubt.

For logos and badges, PNG is the better choice because it supports transparency. For photographs, JPEG is fine and keeps the file size down.

A logo with a white background will print with a white background. On a white flag that's invisible. On a red, navy or black flag it looks like a sticker someone has slapped on, and it's one of the most common things people ask us to fix after the fact.

A transparent PNG lets the flag colour show through, so the badge sits on the design rather than on top of it. If the only version you have has a solid background, the designer's background removal tool can strip it out in a tap. Check the edges afterwards, because thin outlines and pale detail are the first things to go.

Open the file and zoom to 100 per cent. If the edges of your logo are jagged, or the detail has gone blocky, the file is too small for the job and no amount of editing will recover it. Go back and find a larger version.

Then look at it in the designer's live preview, at the size you intend to order. The preview is the honest test: if the badge reads clearly there, it will read clearly on the flag.

Club crests, badges and official photographs are usually protected by copyright or trademark, and they belong to the club or to the photographer. We can't print them without permission from the rights holder, and neither can anyone else.

That isn't the end of the story, though. You can build a flag that feels unmistakably like your club without using any protected artwork: work in the club's colours, use your own original badge or initials, and set it in a style that reads as yours. Our club colour templates are built for exactly that.