How-To & FAQs

Submit by Friday, October 4, 2024 (midnight Eastern time) to ensure inclusion and assist our planning process. The form will automatically close at this time.

During the submission window, please use the upload form on this site to submit your photos. The Submit Photos link will be in the menu at the top of the site and on the front page. The form will confirm some basic requirements about the file, including size, which helps us ensure the image is large enough for print.

Using the upload form ensures that we capture all the information we need in a standard format in order to manage the publishing and notification process. It allows some automation to identify any issues that may arise from an image due to file size or image dimensions. Email clients often resize photos that are attached and image quality is lost. Additionally, the storage space required to host all the files in email becomes difficult to manage and items can be lost or missed. 

You must allow cookies to submit the form. The upload will not work in a private browsing window or Chrome Incognito window. If you have checked your security settings and are still having issues, please contact the Calendar Team.

Please limit submissions to no more than five images. One to three images per dog is ideal.

Oftentimes, yes. However, once you submit your form, the image(s) will be reviewed and you should receive an email within 72 hours* noting if your submission was approved. We may also contact you for additional information or notify you that it was not approved. The form can only detect certain things; it cannot tell if a file is blurry or contains content that we cannot print, so there is some manual review. Please make sure your contact information is correct and complete on the submission form; we will make every attempt to get in touch if we need to.

If your image is not approved, you will receive an email with a link where you can edit your form submission without completely filling out all the information again.

* Occasional delays may occur – this is all volunteered time and we do our best.

Yes. Please note in the submission form (there is a checkbox) that you would like “In loving memory” added to your photo title.

Most likely – and we are willing to work with you. When you fill out the form, in the Images section, select the option that says, “I want to… Reuse the EXACT same photo(s) from a [previous year] calendar.” Please provide any details necessary to identify the image (Important: describe the scene, the colors, the pose of the dog, etc. Simply including the dog’s name is not necessarily enough information to identify the photo.) Images from years prior to 2021 are not on file, but you can resubmit them via the upload form if you have them.

We have tried to provide thorough instructions, but we realize we cannot foresee all technical challenges that may arise. In the event that you cannot find an answer in these FAQ topics, please contact the Calendar Team, here, and we will do our best to assist you.

Yes. Within 24 hours of submitting your photos, you will receive an email either approving your images, asking you to resubmit, or requesting clarification. Please make sure your contact information is correct and complete on the submission form; we will make every attempt to get in touch if we need to.

Your photos may be used on Echo Dogs websites, like this one, or in materials to promote future fundraisers, but will not be used for any for-profit, non-Echo Dogs activities. You remain the owner of your photograph.

In 2022, we moved the Echo Dogs Calendar fundraiser to Lulu.com. You can find all the Echo Dogs products listed on their site, and see a preview of the calendars there. NOTE: Look closely; the products listed may only be the ones from last year. There will be a Place Orders link in the top menu of this site when the current batch of calendars is available. You’ll be able to see all the interior calendar pages and dogs in each version there once they are ready.

Lists of dogs sortable by dog name, calendar, and owner last name are posted on this site on the Place Orders page once they are finalized. The Place Orders link will be in the top menu of this site when the page is live. The products on the Lulu.com site also include the names of the dogs in each calendar version.

Lulu.com notes the printing time on their products – usually 3-5 business days (plus shipping). Delivery times are not guaranteed, and any delivery issues should be addressed with the printer.

In 2022, we began using Lulu.com to order and print our calendars. Please contact their support if you have any issues with printing or shipping, but please also let us know about the issue so we can address it with them going forward. If the issue is related to calendar content, please contact the Calendar Team, here.

• Horizontal images strongly preferred.
• Color images without filters strongly preferred.
• High-resolution / large image file size preferred.
• It MUST be clear and bright so it can be enlarged and printed.
• Minimal distracting elements, like piles of clutter or similar.
• It should be a photo that someone would want to look at for a whole month.

When an image is too small, it loses sharpness and can look choppy. You can see a subtle example of the detail loss illustrated in the magnification below. The lower resolution image here is close to meeting the dimension requirements, but is well under 1 MB and would not be ideal for print.

Many images submitted and rejected for the calendars in the past have been 200KB or below. We are providing this guidance in the hope that it helps everyone save time and stress.

How to find the size and dimensions of an image on a mobile device

Figuring out file size on a mobile phone is a little complicated. For Android users, when viewing a photo, you can swipe up and see the information (see example).

For iPhone users, it’s a little more complicated. Here is a link to a page that outlines a few different ways – but most involve installing an application or sending the photo attached to an email (be careful about automatic downsizing if you choose this option).

You can also utilize a free tool like this (we do not endorse this – please use at your own risk). An example of these tools is https://w3percentagecalculator.com/image-size-finder-online/. Simply select the “Choose Files” option and select your photo from your phone files or computer files. It will immediately display the dimensions and file size.

Unfortunately, in most cases, no. When you upload an image to Facebook or Instagram, the image file is automatically compressed or resized in order for the social platform to optimize page load time and storage space. There is no way to download a high resolution file from Facebook, even if that’s what you uploaded originally. Please use the original photo whenever possible.

Please also avoid submitting images that have added stickers, borders, or clipart, or any heavy filters.

Usually, no. Most web screens are 72ppi, or pixels per inch. Printing is done at 300ppi. So an image that is 10” x 20” on a screen will print at 100% as 2.4” x 4.8”. To print an 8” x 10” photo at 300ppi, you need (8 x 300 = ) 2400 pixels tall and (10 x 300 = ) 3000 pixels wide. This can be accomplished with a high-resolution video (e.g. 4k video) and a very large monitor or editing software, but a standard screenshot or compressed video quality does not produce a decent result.

No, unfortunately that doesn’t really work. Technology is improving in this area, but there’s no way to reliably upsize an image without losing quality. Images are made up of pixels – tiny squares of colors, and you only have so many pixels in an image. Making the image larger, just makes those pixels bigger – it doesn’t produce new information or detail. Starting with a high resolution image is the best way, especially for print.

This is discouraged for copyright reasons. If you choose to submit a photo taken by a professional photographer, daycare provider, or similar, we require the photographer to provide a photo release stating that we may use the image in our print calendars for non-profit fundraising. Please contact the Calendar Team, here, if you have specific use-case questions.

No, please do not submit images that were generated by any artificial intelligence platform, even if they are based on photos of your dog. Photos should be natural and your property (see FAQ on professional photos for additional details on submitting images not owned by you).

Your photo can have other animals in the picture, as long as at least one was adopted from Echo Dogs. Only animals, please, no people. Please also include complete information for all animals in the photo in the upload form.

We may edit your photo to color balance, remove distracting elements such as dust or telephone wires, or crop to specific dimensions. We will do our best to only enhance the quality of the photo.

True. However, this is a long-running fundraiser that provides more funds to Echo Dogs White Shepherd Rescue than any other single annual fundraiser, and we want to continue providing a quality product to those who purchase the calendars. Sometimes, an image just cannot be printed at a size that will be both clear and larger than a postage stamp. With images coming from so many different adopters, having a baseline requirement helps keep the quality consistent.

Submit by Friday, October 4, 2024 (midnight Eastern time) to ensure inclusion and assist our planning process. The form will automatically close at this time.

We will do our best to keep all your dogs in the same calendar. Please note, however, that if you send in multiple images of the same dog, we may only include one photo of that dog per calendar, and the other image(s) may be used in additional calendars. (There will be at least one calendar with all your dogs – unless you have, like, 25 dogs.)

Example: if your dogs are Max, Fido, and Scruffy, and you send in 1 photo of Max, 2 photos of Fido, and 3 photos of Scruffy, you may see them arranged similar to this:

• Calendar A: Max, Fido, Scruffy
• Calendar C: Fido, Scruffy
• Calendar M: Scruffy

Yes – there is a field on the form to note any other dogs / owners you would prefer to be grouped with. We will do our best to honor these requests, but are restricted to a calendar year and the general laws of space and time.

Many, many factors go into selecting the groupings for the calendars. This process can take as long as the photo editing. Here are some of the factors taken into account:

• Multiple dogs from the same home
• In Loving Memory dogs and current adoptees from the same home
• A common foster home
• Littermates
• Seasonality of photos (snow for winter months, etc.)
• Requests to be grouped together
• Avoiding repeating previous year groupings if photos are being reused

Selecting the White Shepherd Lovers content is done by the calendar team and is based on:

• Photo composition / overall energy
• High-resolution files / good focus and detail
• Setting (generally outdoors)
• Seasonality (cannot select 12 winter photos)
• Strong preference given to breed-specific dogs

Selected cover photos for the named calendars are generally among the best photos in each calendar (based on composition, focus, resolution) that are NOT also in the White Shepherd Lovers calendar.

No, unless specifically requested. Please note, however, that this was done in 2020 to allow more photos that would not otherwise make the 8” x 10” print requirements and to allow more dogs to be included in the same calendar. It was not a popular decision, so we won’t repeat it, but it means that we cannot use some images and that we have to be more strict in what images we can accept.