How to Add a Deceased Loved One to a Family Portrait

The request usually starts the same way: "We never got a photo with all of us together." A father who passed before the grandchildren were born, a mother missing from the wedding photos, a family that simply never ended up in the same frame. The good news is that a family portrait does not need a family photo. It is painted from separate photos — one per person — which means the photo of your loved one can come from a different decade than everyone else's, and the finished piece will still read as one moment together.

How a portrait is built from separate photos

Instead of cutting people out of different pictures and pasting them together, the portrait is created as one new scene. Each person's face is taken from their own photo and painted into that shared scene, so everyone ends up in the same light, at the same scale, in the same style. That single detail is what separates a real family portrait with a deceased loved one from a photo-editing merge, where mismatched lighting and grain make the added person look pasted in.

Practically, that means your job is just to gather one clear photo per person. They do not need to match each other in any way — different days, different places, different cameras, different decades are all fine.

Choosing the photo of the person who has passed

This is the photo families agonize over most, so here is the honest rule: pick the one where their face is sharpest, not the one from the most meaningful occasion. The occasion does not survive into the portrait — the background and clothing are replaced by the new scene — but facial detail does.

• Old prints: scan them at the highest resolution you can rather than taking a phone photo of the print at an angle. A flatbed scanner at a library or print shop takes minutes.
• Black and white photos: completely fine — the portrait is painted in color regardless of the source.
• Group shots: usable if their face is large and sharp enough when you zoom in; a cropped face the size of a thumbnail is the main thing that does not work.
• Which age to choose: entirely up to you. Many families pick the age they remember the person at best, even if that makes them "younger" than their children in the portrait — in a painted scene it feels natural, not odd.

The same photo fundamentals apply to everyone else in the portrait — our guide on how to choose the best photo for a custom portrait covers the two-minute checklist for lighting, angle and sharpness.

Deciding how they appear in the scene

There are two broad conventions for memorial portraits, and this choice shapes the whole piece:

Side by side, naturally

The person who has passed simply stands or sits with everyone else, painted the same way, no visual separation. This is what most families choose — the point of the portrait is usually the moment that never got photographed, and this version gives you exactly that.

A gentle visual distinction

Some families prefer a subtle cue — the loved one slightly behind the group, a hand resting on a shoulder from behind, or a softer treatment. This reads as "with us, in memory" rather than "present that day." It is a matter of taste, not correctness; say what you want and the scene is composed around it.

Styles range from classic oil-painting looks to themed scenes, and the same canvas sizing applies as any family piece — the canvas size guide covers what works over a sofa versus on a shelf.

What it costs and how long it takes

A memorial family portrait is priced the same as any custom family portrait — being painted from separate photos, or including someone who has passed, does not add anything. You upload the photos, see a free preview of the combined portrait in seconds, and only order once the likeness feels right. That preview step matters more here than for any other portrait: you are the only judge of whether it looks like them, so check before paying, and try a second photo of your loved one if the first attempt does not capture them.

The bottom line

One clear photo per person is all it takes — a recent shot of each living family member and the sharpest photo you have of the one you lost. Painted into a single scene with shared light and style, the result is the family photo that never got taken, rather than a reminder that it did not.