So you have decided to immortalise your cat in an embroidered portrait. The design is only ever as good as the photo you send us, and cats are famously uncooperative models. Here is exactly how to get a photo worth stitching, from the studio that has hand drawn over 200,000 pets.
How do you take the perfect photo of your cat?
Photograph your cat in soft, indirect daylight near a window, with your phone held at their eye level and roughly 60cm away. Fill the frame with their head and shoulders, turn the flash off, and use burst mode to capture 20 or more frames while a toy or crinkly sound holds their attention just above the lens. The best photo is sharp, evenly lit, taken face on, and shows both eyes and both ears clearly.
Key takeaways
- Use natural daylight, never the flash
- Shoot at your cat's eye level, not from above
- Fill most of the frame with the head and shoulders
- Keep both eyes open and both ears fully in shot
- Use burst mode and take 20 or more frames
- Tap to focus, then raise the exposure on dark coats
- Upload the original file, not a screenshot or a filtered copy
Why the photo matters more than you think
Every portrait starts with an artist studying your photo, then drawing your cat by hand. We are looking for the details that make them them: the exact markings, the set of the ears, the shape of the eyes, that one crooked whisker.
A bright, sharp photo gives our artists everything they need. A dark or blurry one forces them to guess, and guessing is how you end up with a portrait that looks like a cat, just not your cat. Two minutes spent getting a better photo is the single biggest thing you can do to improve the finished piece.
Light is everything, meow-tastic
Natural light beats every other option, and it costs nothing. Position your cat near a window on a bright but overcast day, or in open shade outdoors. Soft, even daylight shows the true colour of the coat and holds detail in both the shadows and the highlights, which is exactly what our artists need in order to match thread colours.
What is the best lighting for photographing a cat?
Soft, indirect daylight from a window is best. It renders fur colour accurately and avoids hard shadows. Avoid direct midday sun, which blows out white fur, and avoid overhead ceiling lights, which cast shadows straight down into the eye sockets. Never use flash on a cat: it flattens the features, causes hard shadows and produces green eyeshine from the reflective layer behind their eyes.
If the room is dim, move your cat rather than reaching for the flash. Even a windowsill on a grey day gives you far more usable light than a lamp. On an iPhone, Night mode will try to compensate in low light, but it needs a still subject for a second or more, and cats are rarely that obliging.
Photographing black cats and dark coats
Black cats are the hardest to photograph and the most rewarding to stitch. Phone cameras meter for the whole scene, so a dark cat in a bright room comes out as a silhouette with no visible features.
How do you photograph a black cat properly?
Give a black cat roughly twice as much light as you think it needs, and put that light in front of them rather than behind. Tap the screen on their face to set focus, then use exposure compensation to brighten the shot until you can see fur texture and the shape of the muzzle rather than a flat black shape. A light, plain background helps their outline read clearly.
On an iPhone, tap the face then drag the small sun icon upwards to raise the exposure, as described in Apple's guidance on setting focus and exposure. On a Pixel, tap and hold the screen to bring up the brightness and shadows sliders, covered in Google's Pixel Camera help. Most Samsung and other Android cameras use the same tap then slide pattern.
Get down to their level, purr-spective is everything
Photos taken from standing height give you a foreshortened head, an enormous nose and no eye contact. Kneel, crouch or lie on the floor so the lens sits level with your cat's eyes. It is less flattering for you and far more flattering for them.
What is the best angle and distance for a pet portrait photo?
Shoot straight on at eye level, from around 60cm away, with the head and shoulders filling most of the frame. Face on or a slight three quarter angle both work well, as long as both ears are visible. Avoid shooting from above, and avoid digital zoom, which discards the detail our artists rely on. If you cannot get close, shoot from where you are and crop afterwards.
Camera settings that actually matter
You do not need a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. A modern smartphone is more than enough, provided you take control of four things.
- Flash: off. Always, for the reasons above
- Focus: tap the eyes. Autofocus often grabs the nose or the background. Tap the screen on the eye nearest the camera. On iPhone you can hold to set AE/AF Lock so it does not drift
- Exposure: nudge it manually. Brighten for dark cats, darken slightly for white cats so the fur does not lose all its texture
- Burst mode: on. Hold the shutter, or hold and drag on an iPhone, and fire off 20 to 30 frames
Leave HDR and the default processing alone, since both help in mixed light. Do not use the front facing selfie camera, which is lower resolution on almost every phone. The main rear lens at 1x gives you the sharpest, most detailed file.
How to make a cat actually look at the camera
Cats do not respond to "look here" the way dogs do, so use sound and movement instead:
- Hold a toy, a treat or a crinkly wrapper directly above your phone, so their gaze lands next to the lens
- Make a new noise, not one they already ignore. A squeak, a click, a tap on a hard surface
- Play a bird or cat video on a second phone held just behind your camera
- Bring a second person, so one of you holds attention while the other shoots
- Work in the ten minutes after a nap, when they are alert but still settled
You have roughly three seconds before a new sound stops being interesting, so have the camera open and pointed before you make it.
Props, treats and personality, purr-sonalise the shoot
A bandana, a bow tie, a favourite toy or a Christmas hat all stitch beautifully and turn a nice portrait into an unmistakable one. Two rules: keep the prop clear of the face, and make sure the ears and eyes stay fully visible. If a hat covers one ear, we lose half of what makes your cat recognisable.
Collars, name tags and distinctive markings are all worth including. Tell us in the order notes if there is a detail that matters, such as a scar, a folded ear tip or heterochromia, and we will make sure it is in the drawing.
Editing, resolution and file formats
Small adjustments help. Heavy ones hurt.
- Do crop so the head fills the frame, lift the brightness a little, and raise the exposure on dark coats
- Do not apply filters, beauty modes, AI enhancement or heavy saturation. They shift your cat's real colours, and we match thread to the colours we can see
- Do not screenshot the photo or send it through a chat app that compresses it. A screenshot is a low resolution copy of your photo, not the photo
What resolution and file format should you upload?
Upload the original file straight from your camera roll, whether that is HEIC, JPEG or PNG. Anything from about 1500 pixels on the longest edge upwards is comfortable, and most phones from the last decade produce far more than that. Sharpness and lighting matter more than megapixels: a bright, clear photo from an older phone beats a dim, blurry one from the newest.
Portrait mode is fine as long as the whole head stays sharp. Check the ear tips and the whiskers before sending, because the artificial background blur sometimes eats them. Live Photos are fine too, since the still frame is a normal photo, though picking a different key frame can occasionally give you a sharper expression.
Good photo vs bad photo
| Good photo | Bad photo |
|---|---|
| Soft window light | Flash or overhead ceiling light |
| Camera at eye level | Shot looking down from standing |
| Head fills most of the frame | Cat small in a wide room shot |
| Both eyes open, both ears visible | Asleep, or one ear cropped off |
| Original file from the camera roll | Screenshot, or sent through a chat app |
| Burst of 20 or more frames | One rushed single shot |
| No filters applied | Filtered, AI enhanced or heavily saturated |
| One cat, clearly the subject | Two cats sharing one photo |
What our artists see most often
Every photo is reviewed by an artist before drawing begins. These are the issues that most often make a photo harder to work from, in the order we encounter them:
- Not enough light, particularly indoor photos of dark coated cats
- Shot from above, which distorts the head and hides the eyes
- Motion blur from a single shot taken as the cat moved
- Cropped ears, which removes one of the most recognisable features
- Screenshots and compressed copies sent from messaging apps
None of these mean we cannot make your portrait. They simply mean more back and forth at the proof stage, which is why this guide exists.
The 60 second checklist
Run through this before you upload. If every row is a yes, your portrait is going to look like them.
| Check | What good looks like | |
|---|---|---|
| Lighting | Soft daylight, no flash, face evenly lit | Yes |
| Angle | Camera at eye level, cat facing towards you | Yes |
| Framing | Head and shoulders fill most of the frame | Yes |
| Focus | Tapped on the eyes, whiskers sharp when you zoom in | Yes |
| Eyes and ears | Both eyes open, both ears fully in shot | Yes |
| File | Original photo from the camera roll | Yes |
| Filters | None applied | Avoid |
| Zoom | Digital zoom from across the room | Avoid |
Five mistakes we see every day
- Shot from above. The most common one by far. Get low
- Cat asleep. Adorable, but closed eyes remove the feature that makes a portrait feel alive
- Dark room, dark cat. If you cannot see the fur texture on your screen, neither can our artists
- Screenshots of screenshots. Every copy loses detail. Send the original
- Two cats in one photo. Lovely photo, but each pet needs their own clear shot so we can draw them properly
Turn that photo into something you keep forever
Hand drawn from your photo and embroidered in our Cambridge studio. You approve a proof first, with unlimited edits, and nothing is stitched until it looks exactly like them.
Create your cat's portraitFrequently asked questions
What is the best photo of a cat for an embroidered portrait?
A well lit, sharp, front facing photo of your cat's head and shoulders, taken at their eye level with both eyes open and both ears visible. Daylight from a window is ideal, and the original file always beats a screenshot.
Should I use Portrait mode?
You can, as long as the whole head stays sharp. Portrait mode blurs the background artificially, and it sometimes catches whisker tips and ear edges in that blur. Zoom in and check those areas before sending. A standard Photo mode shot in good light is the safer choice.
Can I send a Live Photo?
Yes. A Live Photo saves a normal still image alongside a short clip, and that still is what we work from. If the main frame is not the sharpest moment, you can choose a different key frame in the Photos app first, then send that version.
Can you work from a video still?
Sometimes, though video frames are lower resolution than photos and often carry motion blur. If a video is genuinely the only footage you have, send it and we will tell you honestly whether we can work from a frame of it.
Can I use an old printed photograph?
Yes. Lay the print flat in good daylight, photograph it straight on rather than at an angle, and avoid a flash so you do not get glare. Scanning at 600 dpi gives an even better result if you have access to a scanner.
Can AI improve a blurry photo?
We would rather you did not use it. AI upscalers invent detail that was never there, changing markings, eye shape and fur direction, which is precisely the information our artists need to be accurate. Send the original and let us judge it.
Does it work for kittens?
Yes, though kittens move constantly, so burst mode matters even more. Photograph them shortly after they have eaten or woken, and consider having someone hold them gently while you shoot from eye level.
What about long haired cats like Persians and Maine Coons?
Long coats stitch beautifully, since thread naturally suits texture. Give them slightly more light than usual so the layers separate rather than merging into one shape, and brush them first if they will tolerate it.
Can I send a photo of a cat who has passed away?
Yes, and we handle memorial orders with a great deal of care. Older or lower resolution photos are absolutely fine. Our artists work with what you have, and you will see a proof before anything is stitched so you can tell us what to adjust.
Can I use a photo with two cats in it?
We would rather have one clear photo per cat. If your only photo has both, send it anyway and tell us in the order notes. We can often work from it, and multi-pet designs are available.
What if my cat will not sit still?
Use burst mode to take 20 or more frames in a few seconds, then pick the sharpest. Shoot shortly after a nap or a meal, when they are alert but settled, and let them move away when they want to.
What happens after I send my photo?
An artist hand draws your cat from it and sends you a proof, usually within about three days. You can request unlimited edits until it is right, and only then does it go to the embroidery machines.
Happy snapping. We cannot wait to meet your cat.
Camera guidance referenced from Apple iPhone camera support and Google Pixel Camera help. Photo standards and studio observations come from our own artists in Cambridge.
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