The Secret of Creating Awesome Photo Puzzles

Photo puzzles make great family activities

For generations, young and old alike have tackled jigsaw puzzles. They provide an opportunity to spend quality time with your family, to share the day's experiences and to chat about each other's interests.

Through the ease of digital photography, it's now possible for you to create your own photo puzzles.

Choose the best photos

If you've ever done puzzles, you might have come across some that were extremely difficult, yet fun to do. They were a challenge because many elements were the same. For example, a puzzle with a lot of water and shoreline or that contains a blossoming apple orchard with many similar-looking areas. These are tough to put together.

Most likely, you will have done much easier photo puzzles. They might have contained city streets, parkland, an historic site or a panorama.

As you can see, almost any photo will do. You can use family portraits, travel shots, action photos, photos of your child's artwork, your school or community ball team, extreme close-ups and anything that interests you.

The secret to creating awesome photo puzzles is to use large, well-focused images that contain a lot of diversity and points of interest. Standard 4x6 photos will translate well into photo puzzles.

Diverse photos generally have simple areas, like sky with distinctive cloud shapes and sections that are a bit more complicated, like a tree in bloom or a flowerbed. Another section might be relatively easy, such as a small group of people.

A photo puzzle like this would be suitable for almost all family members. Don't underestimate your children's amazing ability to focus on detail. You just might find that they are better at putting together the hard sections.

Get the photo puzzles finished

The next step is to locate a good printer who specializes in printing photo puzzles. There are lots online from which you can choose. Check their requirements such as photo size and format, usually .jpg, and they'll do the rest.

How to use your photo puzzles

Use a photo of a family wedding, anniversary celebration, or a new family member and share the photo puzzle with friends and family. Grandparents will be tickled to receive a photo puzzle of their grandchildren.

Get creative. There are many options available to you. Just be sure to use your own photos because if you use found images you could be violating copyright laws.

Choose some great photos from your family collections, whether it's a portrait or your latest holiday excursion, and you can create awesome photo puzzles with ease.