Diwali Photo Cards and WhatsApp Stickers With Your Own Photo

To make Diwali wishes with your own photo, cut yourself or your family out of the picture, place that transparent cut-out on a festive design, then export the result at the size of the place you are sending it. A WhatsApp sticker, a status, an Instagram post and a printed card all want different sizes, and getting that right is most of the difference between a sharp greeting and a blurry one.

This guide covers each step, from choosing the photo to printing a card, plus a few cultural and copyright points worth checking before you send something to two hundred relatives.

Diwali 2026 dates

According to Drik Panchang's Diwali calendar for 2026, calculated for New Delhi:

Festival dates follow the Hindu lunar calendar and are worked out for a location, so they can move by a day in another time zone. If you live in the US, UK, Canada or the UAE, change the city on Drik Panchang before you plan around a date. Printed cards sent by post, especially overseas, need to leave well before that.

What WipeMark does, and what it does not

WipeMark does one part of this job. It removes the background from your photo and gives you either a transparent cut-out or the same photo on any solid color. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark. You can download the full-size result, up to 25 megapixels, as PNG, JPG or WebP, and the background removal takes about 15 seconds.

It does not add diyas, rangoli, frames, borders or text. There are no templates. So the workflow has three tools in it, not one:

1. Cut out the photo with WipeMark.
2. Place the transparent PNG on a Diwali design in a free tool such as Canva, Google Slides, PowerPoint, a phone editor, or WhatsApp's sticker maker.
3. Export and share at the right size.

Keep the cut-out as its own file and you can reuse it for a sticker, a story, a post and a printed card.

Pick a photo that cuts out cleanly

Background removal works best when the subject stands out from what is behind them. Festive photos are often the hardest kind, full of lights, flowers and other people.

• Use the original file. A photo that has been forwarded on WhatsApp is compressed and often shrunk. Ask for it to be sent as a document instead. No tool can put back lost pixels.
• Good light on faces. Daylight near a window, or the warm light of the evening before the diyas are lit, gives cleaner edges than a dark room lit only by a string of fairy lights.
• Contrast with the background. A family in bright silks against a plain wall cuts out more cleanly than the same family in front of a marigold torana of the same color.
• Festive clothes are fine, with care. Zari borders, sequins and mirror work cut out well. Sheer dupattas and net sarees are partly see-through, so the background shows through them. Expect to check those edges.
• Hair and jewelry. Loose hair, jhumkas and maang tikkas are fine edges to keep, but look at them closely after the cut-out.
• Group photos. Background removers usually keep everyone standing together, but a guest half in frame may be cut off or kept by mistake. A tight group with no gaps works best.

Cut out the photo

1. Open WipeMark and drop in the photo. Your browser sends only a reduced copy, at most 1024 pixels on the long side, and nothing is stored.
2. Wait about 15 seconds for the background removal.
3. Zoom in on hair, dupattas, hands and the edges of the group. Use the Restore brush to paint back anything that was cut off, such as an ear, a hand on someone's shoulder or the end of a pallu. Use Erase to trim stray bits of background or a stranger at the edge.
4. Choose the background:
   • Transparent if you will place the photo on a design. Download PNG (or WebP for a sticker).
   • A solid color if you want a simple greeting with no template, for example your family on deep maroon or marigold. Our change background color page covers picking an exact shade.
5. Download the full-size file and keep it. It is your master copy for every size below.

Do not save the cut-out as JPG if you want transparency. JPG has no alpha channel, so the empty background is filled with a solid color, usually white or black. Our explainer on transparent PNG files covers why, and the transparent background maker page covers the same steps.

If you would rather do the whole thing on your phone, our guide to removing a background on iPhone and Android compares the built-in phone options.

Make a WhatsApp sticker from the cut-out

A personal Diwali sticker is the quickest greeting to make, and the one people actually forward. WhatsApp's sticker guidelines for app developers set the format:

• Exactly 512 by 512 pixels.
• WebP format.
• A static sticker must be 100 KB or less; an animated one 500 KB or less.
• A pack holds 3 to 30 stickers, with a separate 96 by 96 pixel tray icon of 50 KB or less.
• WhatsApp recommends an 8 px white stroke around each sticker, so it reads on light and dark chat backgrounds.

If you use a sticker app, give it your transparent WebP or PNG and let it resize and compress. WhatsApp also has its own Custom Sticker Maker; its August 2024 announcement says it can turn your photos into stickers and edit them with crop, text and draw tools.

For a sticker, crop tight. At 512 pixels a full family standing in a row becomes tiny, so faces from the shoulders up work best. Leave a little clear space around the edge, roughly 16 px on each side as our suggestion, so the white stroke is not clipped. Our WhatsApp sticker maker page has more on choosing a photo that reads well at sticker size.

Photo editing in Canva, Slides or your phone

For anything bigger than a sticker, you need a background design. Choose the canvas size first, so you do not have to crop later.

Instagram keeps photos up to 1080 pixels wide with an aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 3:4; other ratios are cropped and wider photos are sized down.

In Canva

Canva has a large set of Diwali card templates, and many are free; check each template and element for a Pro label before you build on it. Upload your transparent PNG and drag it onto the design. Canva keeps the transparency of a PNG you upload, so the template's diyas and rangoli show around your family instead of a white box. Use the layer controls to keep any garland or border in front of the cut-out, add your greeting, and download as PNG or JPG. A transparent-background download is a Canva Pro feature, but a finished card with its background does not need it.

In Google Slides or PowerPoint

In Google Slides, open File, Page setup, choose Custom and enter a size in pixels, for example 1080 by 1920 for a story; Google's help on changing slide size lists the steps. Add a background you have the rights to, insert your PNG on top, add text and download the slide as a PNG image. Check the downloaded file's pixel size before using it for print. PowerPoint works the same way through Slide Size.

On your phone

Phone editors such as PicsArt, and many gallery apps, can add one image on top of another as a layer or sticker. Open the background, add the cut-out, size it and save. Make sure the app does not turn your cut-out into a JPG on the way in.

Check the size before you place the cut-out

Enter the pixel size of your downloaded cut-out to see the canvas, how large to place it, and whether it has enough pixels.

Print a physical card

A print looks sharp at reading distance at about 300 pixels per inch (ppi). Multiply the card size in inches by 300 to get the pixels the whole card needs:

Your cut-out only needs enough pixels for the area it covers on the card, not the whole card. A family cut-out from a 12-megapixel phone photo is usually plenty for a 5 by 7 inch card. A photo that has been through WhatsApp often is not, and the helper above will show it printing well under 300 ppi.

A few print basics:

• Bleed. Printers cut cards slightly inside the edge, so backgrounds should run past the trim line. In Canva, turn on Show print bleed from the file settings, and download as PDF Print, which Canva describes as 300 dpi with bleed and crop marks. Ask your print shop what bleed they want.
• Safe margin. Keep faces and text well away from the edges, so nothing important is trimmed.
• Proof first. Print one copy at home or ask for a single proof before ordering fifty.

If you are reprinting an old family photo for a "then and now" card, our guide to restoring old photos covers scanning resolution and cleaning up dust and scratches.

Design notes that respect the festival

Diwali is the festival of lights, and simple designs often look best:

• Diyas. Small clay lamps, usually in a row, lit for Lakshmi Puja on the evening of Diwali.
• Rangoli. Geometric or floral patterns in colored powder or flowers, drawn at the entrance. They work well as a corner or border motif.
• Warm colors. Marigold orange, deep red, maroon and gold sit well behind skin tones and festive clothes.
• Simple words. "Happy Diwali", "Shubh Deepavali" or a short line in your family's language. Diwali is celebrated across many communities, so a warm, simple greeting suits most contact lists.

Leave space around your family. A cut-out squeezed between a dozen decorations is harder to see on a phone screen than one with room to breathe.

Copyright: use designs you have the right to use

A family greeting can travel a long way once forwarded, so use only backgrounds and elements you have the right to use:

• Canva free content. Canva's Content License Agreement lists greeting cards among the permitted uses for its free content. Branded content is for personal use only, and if a design mixes content types, the most restrictive license applies to the whole design.
• Your own photos. Your diyas, your rangoli and your lights are yours to use, and they make a card feel more personal than a stock template.
• Not from search results. An image found on Google, Pinterest or Instagram almost always belongs to someone. Do not lift it for your card.
• Ask before you sticker someone. A sticker of a cousin can end up in chats you never see. Ask first.

Quick checklist

1. Start from a sharp, well-lit original photo.
2. Cut it out, check hair and dupatta edges, and download a transparent PNG.
3. Place it on a Diwali design you have rights to.
4. Export at the right size: 512 by 512 WebP for a sticker, 1080 by 1920 for a story or status, 1080 by 1080 for a post, 300 ppi for print.
5. Send it before Lakshmi Puja on Sunday 8 November.