4 November 2026 · 7 min read

Make a Christmas Card From Your Own Photo — Free, No Design App

Turn a family or pet photo into a Christmas card for free: cut out the background, add a festive colour, size it for print and compress it for WhatsApp.

Pick a clear photo, cut out your family or pet with a free background remover, place them on a festive colour, add one line of text, then export a large version for printing and a small one for WhatsApp or email. All you need is a browser and the photo editor or slides app you already have — no design app, no account. Here is the whole process, with sizes that work.

What do you need to make a photo Christmas card?

• One good photo of your family, your kids, your pet, or all of them.
• Skrubly's Background Remover, to cut the subject out. It is free and runs in your browser.
• Something that can add text: your phone's built-in photo editor or markup tool, the Photos app on your computer, or a slides app such as Google Slides, Keynote or PowerPoint.
• About twenty minutes.

Step 1: Choose a photo that cuts out cleanly

• The subject should stand out from the background — a dark coat against a pale wall, not a dark coat against a dark hedge.
• Good, even light. Daylight near a window beats a dim room with one lamp.
• The whole outline in frame. Cropped-off ears, heads or paws are hard to fix later.
• The highest resolution you have. Use the original from your phone, not a copy someone sent you in a chat app, which is usually compressed.
• For pets, contrast matters most: fluffy fur is the hardest thing for any background remover, and a plain background helps a lot.

Step 2: Remove the background

• Open the Background Remover and drop in your photo. JPG, PNG, WebP and iPhone HEIC photos all work.
• It runs on your device: the photo is not uploaded. The first time, the page downloads the AI model, so the first cut-out takes a little longer than the rest.
• Check the edges, especially hair, ears and hands. Use the retouch brush to restore anything that was cut off or erase leftover bits of background.
• Choose the transparent background and download the PNG. That gives you the most freedom in the next step.

Step 3: Put your cut-out on a festive background

• Quickest: pick one of the solid colours in the background remover itself. Green, white, deep purple or blue all work for winter. There is no red swatch, so for a red card use the transparent PNG instead.
• Any colour you like: open a blank slide, set the slide background to your colour, and drop the transparent PNG on top. Slides apps also make adding text easy.
• A photo background: place the cut-out over your own photo of snow, fairy lights or the tree, slightly blurred so your subject stands out.

Two small touches make a cut-out look intentional rather than pasted: a soft shadow under the subject, or a thick white outline for a sticker look. Leave clear space above or below for your message.

Step 4: Add your message

• Keep it short: 'Merry Christmas from the Garcias', 'Season's greetings', 'Happy holidays from Luna (and her humans)'.
• Make it big. The card will often be seen on a phone screen first.
• Use one font, two at most, and make sure it contrasts with the background.
• Keep text away from the edges, especially if you are printing: printers can trim a few millimetres.
• Add the year in small text if you want the card to work as a keepsake.

What size should a Christmas card be?

For printing, design at 300 pixels per inch. For screens, much smaller files are fine. In a slides app, set the page size before you start designing, then export as PNG, or PDF if your print shop prefers it.

Print shops often ask for a bleed margin of a few millimetres around the edge, and some want a specific format. Check their specification before you order a batch.

Step 5: Compress the card for WhatsApp and email

A full-resolution PNG can easily be several megabytes, which is slow to send and fills up relatives' phones. Keep the large file for printing and make a separate copy for sending. In Skrubly's compressor, the Balanced level keeps images up to 2560 pixels on the long edge and Strong up to 1600 — either still looks sharp on a phone. Like the background remover, it runs in your browser. WhatsApp also compresses photos you send normally; sending the card as a document keeps it exactly as you made it, at the cost of a bigger file.

Common problems and quick fixes

• Jagged or haloed hair: tidy it with the retouch brush, or choose a background colour closer to the original one so the edges blend.
• The subject looks pasted on: add a soft shadow, and pick a background that matches the warmth of the light in the photo.
• Blurry print: the source photo is too small for the print size. Print smaller, or use the original file from the camera roll.
• Text hard to read on a phone: make it bigger and increase contrast. Thin script fonts are the usual culprit.
• Colours print darker than on screen: home and shop printers often do. Brighten the design slightly and print one test copy first.

That is it: one photo, a cut-out, a colour and a line of text. Make one version for the fridge and one for the family group chat, and you are done before the mince pies are.