It is one thing to go to the store and buy an impersonal Christmas card however no matter how expensive or heartfelt it is this is exactly the kind of card that quickly ends up in the garbage bin. This is because simply buying a greeting card in a store does not seem very sincere or intimate to others. A photo Christmas card however conveys the message that you have spent some money and gone to a little more effort to impress the person that is receiving your holiday greeting.

Thanks to advances in digital photography and computer photography sending a family photo is no longer a big deal. Digital cameras allow you to take the photograph immediately and retake any photographs that don't turn out well. Real film is rarely used anymore to create a photo card so they are quite cheap to have created professionally or to create yourself. Making your own family photo christmas card is especially a snap thanks to simple design programs (both online and that you can buy) that allow you to attach a photo to your own design and print it right off of your computer. That is yet another thing that technology has saved us all from recently – the time, anxiety and expense of waiting for ages for a printed photo christmas card set to come back from the printer's.

There is no right way to create a christmas photo for your card. In this day and age the more creative and more casual the card is, the more fashionable it is. The design of the photo Christmas card has come a long way since the family had to line up all in arrow dressed in their Sunday best. Nowadays you are more likely to see a photo Christmas card where the whole family is dressed up as Santa, or performing an activity that has little to do with Christmas such as waterskiing. In fact nowadays, the less the card has to do with the Christian form of holiday greeting, the more politically correct it is. The traditional sight of snow and Santa and references to the Christ Child may be left out of the card's message altogether.

It is quite easy to create your own cards. Many people creating do-it-yourself photo Christmas cards get inspiration from scrapbooking ideas or simply by looking around on the Internet and graphics and different fonts. The idea is to keep the project as simple as possible. Most beginning designers make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew and then abandon their do-it-yourself photo Christmas card when it proves to be too difficult to complete.

If designing your own card is beyond you, then you can always farm out the creation of your photo Christmas card to a professional who can make sure it is designed and printed properly for you.