Think portrait, not landscape
A trading card is taller than it is wide. A wide landscape photo has to lose its edges to fit, which is why photos with the subject off to one side of a wide frame often crop awkwardly.
You do not need to crop the photo yourself beforehand — the card builder handles it — but choosing a photo that suits a portrait frame gives you far more to work with.
The three rules of a clean card crop
- ✓Leave headroom — a little space above the head keeps the subject off the top border
- ✓Leave side room — templates add borders and effects that need space to breathe
- ✓Keep the subject clear — one athlete, framed from roughly the waist up or in full action
What not to do
The most common mistake is cropping too tight before uploading. A photo cropped right to the athlete's outline leaves the builder no room, and the finished card feels cramped — the head touches the border, the name plate crowds the feet.
Also resist cropping group photos down to one player at the far edge. The remaining pixels may be too few to print sharply. If the player is small in a wide team shot, a different photo will almost always make a better card.
A quick check before you finalize
In the builder, zoom the preview to full size and look at the edges: is the head clear of the top? Is there room at the sides for the border? Is the face or the action the obvious center of attention?
If the crop fights you, the photo is telling you something. Swapping to a cleaner photo takes a minute and makes a bigger difference than any amount of careful cropping.