Photo Ball Marker - Creating the Sharpest Picture Possible

The Photo Ball Marker picture edit tool is terrific for making it easy for you to upload pictures for your ball markers. You simply select your picture and use the sliders and selection square to select the area of your picture to be used for your Photo Ball Marker.



Our special laser printer prints at a resolution of 600 x 600 dpi. We capture and print a 630 x 630 pixel photo so we have a small buffer when we cut out the one inch diameter circle for your ball marker. We display back a 100 x 100 pixel image (96 dpi) which gives an excellent approximation of what your photo ball marker is going to look like.



After you select a region for your picture, that area is resized into a 630 x 630 pixel picture that is used for printing. Anytime a picture is resized either increasing or decreasing from it's original size some degree of focus is loss in the resizing.



There are two common focus issues when resizing uploaded pictures.



First, a lot of the pictures will be low resolution (96 dpi) and the user selects an area using the selection tool that is much less than 630 x 630 pixels. Our software and printer both make corrections to create the best possible image from the lower resolution picture. But, as each pixel is expanded a slight blurring effect occurs. For most of us, the picture will look fine, but the photographers and graphics people will notice a little blurring.



Second, the digital cameras of today are taking pictures at very high resolutions. This is great if you are printing an 8 x 10 inch photo or a poster. However, it can cause problems when you are printing a one inch photo ball marker. We see selected areas of 2000+ x 2000+ pixels as the large pictures are being uploaded. When this very high resolution selected area is resized by our software and printer a little sharpness is loss. We show this in the image we display back. Again, for most of us this is fine, but the sharp eye can notice the loss of focus. Sometimes, too much resolution is just as bad as too little.



If you do have an eagle eye and want to create the sharpest Photo Ball Marker as possible the secret is very simple. When using the selection tool, select a region of your photo as close to 630 x 630 pixels as possible. To do this you may want to load your image into your own photo editing software and resize it before uploading. The selection tools displays the size of the selection area on the left hand side. The closer to 630 x 630 the sharper the image will be.



Finally, for most of us this resizing isn't even an issue. But, if you are one with an eagle eye, this is the secret to creationg the sharpest picture possible.

Photo Ball Marker - Two Ways To Make Your Picture Fit

Our picture edit tool is terrific. After uploading your picture you can zoom in and out and change the sizing square. Once happy with your selection you submit it and we display your picture inside a ball marker. This allows you to know exactly how your ball marker is going to look before you place your order.

Occasionally, our users want to place the entire picture inside the sizing square. The secret to doing this is to redimension your picture into a square. The new square picture will fit perfectly in the sizing square.

We suggest two methods to do this:

Method 1

Load your picture into your picture editing software and resize the picture into a square. For example, if you have an 800x600 pixel picture resize it into 800x800. Save the resized picture, with a new name, and load the new picture into our picture edit tool. Everything will be stretched a little vertically. But, in most cases, your picture will look fine.

Method 2

Load your picture into your picture editing tool and resize the frame into a square and leave the picture as it. Center the picture in the frame and then fill in the empty space with a color or gradient that looks nice. Save the resized picture, with a new name, and load the new picture into our picture edit tool.

Both of these methods work well if you need to fit your entire picture in our photo sizing square.

Photo Ball Marker - Thanks For The Great Start

To Our Photo Ball Marker Family…

Charlotte and I want to take to take a moment and thank each of you for your support of PhotoBallMarker.com.

Last summer, while we were shopping at Fiddler’s Green, a famous golf shop in Eugene, Oregon, (if you are ever in the neighborhood visit this place) I made an innocent comment about putting photos on ball markers and that started all this. Charlotte and I came up with a nice method for making them and we were off.

Pearl H. (Cool Cat) was our first internet customer and we were pretty excited about that first internet order. Cliff W. (Unbridled Joy) has the most ball markers. Rob H. (lefty with the swing) has posted on some forums and that is a huge help. Gary N. created the first company logo photo markers and they looked great. Everybody has sent wonderful pictures and the nicest comments and each of you have help create the Photo Ball Marker family. Many of your comments are posted on the Comments Page and many more will be. We plan on building the largest Comments Page on the Internet, because your pictures and words are so much better than mine.

Many of you have mentioned you plan on making additional orders as Christmas gifts. I am working on getting a Gift Certificate option available through the website but, that is still not available. The process of making the ball markers does take 3-5 days and they are hand crafted by Charlotte, I only get to look at them from a distance. Occasionally, we have to redo one and then it takes additional time. That being said, I have posted Dec. 13 as the latest we are going to be able to get an order to you before Dec. 25. Even that is cutting things very close.

Photo Ball Marker - How We Got Started

PhotoBallMarker.com got started with a single sentence at the the checkout stand of a famous golf shop in Oregon.

Like many avid golfers in Eugene, Oregon we spend a lot of time wandering and shopping at Fiddler's Green, a famous golf shop just outside of Eugene, Oregon.

During one of our visits in June 2008, Charlotte and I were making our latest and greatest golf purchases, when I pointed to the display of gofl ball markers and mentioned that it would be cool to have photo ball markers.

Char normally shakes off my ideas for products I think are cool but this time she surprised me with her response. She thought it would be a very good product for golfers and make for a wonderful golfing gift.We checked on the internet and found a few sites offering photo ball markers but not the type of product or website experience we envisioned.

We strived to create a quality and long lasting ball marker and combine it with a nice website experience.We worked hard over the summer perfecting our photo ball markers and building a website that is easy and fun to use.

We hope you visit PhotoBallMarker.com and order your set of photo ball markers soon.