Stacked family portraits
Christmas family portraits
The whole picture in monochrome. The Santa hats in red. Made from a photo you already have.
Christmas portraits · 6 of them · drag to scrub
Why it works
Why the hats are the only colour
Everybody's Christmas photo looks like everybody else's Christmas photo: a tree, a lot of colour, someone blinking. This is the opposite of that. The frame is monochrome from edge to edge — skin, hair, jumpers, backdrop — and the only colour anywhere in it is the red of the hats. It reads as a photograph somebody took on purpose.
You do not need to have taken a Christmas photo. You do not need hats, a tree, or a free Saturday in December. Upload a picture of your family that you already like, and the hats are added to the portrait along with everything else.
You see the finished portrait, watermarked, before you decide whether to buy it.
Nothing is posted, so there is no shipping cutoff to miss. You can order as late as 22 December — the portrait is made while you wait, in about 3 minutes, and downloaded straight away.
Christmas questions
Questions about Christmas portraits
Can I print it?
Yes. You get one full-resolution 9:16 file with no watermark and no logo on it, which is good to roughly A3 in print. It is yours — print it, frame it, put it on a card, send it to whoever you like. There is no licence to read and nothing to renew.
How late can I order for Christmas?
You can order on 22 December and still have it. There is nothing to post, so there is no shipping cutoff to miss — the portrait is generated while you wait and downloaded straight away. Printed cards have to be ordered weeks earlier because they have to physically travel to you; this does not.
What if someone in the photo is already wearing a hat?
It is replaced with a Santa hat rather than stacked on top of one. The Christmas portrait treats headwear as the one thing it is allowed to change — everything else about a person, including their hair, their glasses and their expression, is preserved as carefully as in the standard portrait. If someone's existing hat is a large part of how you recognise them in that photo, pick a different photo.
Does everyone get a hat?
Yes. Every posed person in the portrait gets one, and the portrait is checked automatically before you see it: the number of hats is counted against the number of people, and the result is rejected and regenerated if they do not match.
Will it still look like my family?
That is the part we spend the most on. Before the portrait is drawn, the photograph is read and each person's face is written down in words, and that written description goes into the portrait. The finished image is then scored against your original photo and made again automatically if the likeness is not close enough. It is not magic — a dark, blurry or very small original will still produce a weaker likeness than a clear one.
Are the hats always red?
Yes, and this is checked rather than assumed. The finished portrait is measured pixel by pixel: the hats have to be genuinely, saturatedly red, and everything outside them has to be genuinely grey. A portrait where the hats came out a washed-out pink, or where colour leaked into somebody's jumper, does not reach you.
How many people can be in it?
Two to six, with every face clearly visible in the original photograph. They are arranged in a stacked composition — tallest and oldest furthest back, youngest closest to the camera — which is what gives the portrait its depth.
Is it the same price as the standard portrait?
Yes, $12.99, once. The Christmas portrait costs us slightly more to make than the plain one and is priced the same anyway. There is no subscription and no seasonal surcharge.
Read next
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What actually makes a Christmas card photo work — the light, the arrangement, the number of colours — and how to get one out of a photo you already have.
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