Variable images let you swap out a picture on your card for each individual recipient, instead of printing the same image on every piece. Use them when you want to personalize a photo per recipient — for example, showing a different product photo, a different neighborhood or property photo, or a headshot that matches the person you're mailing to.

A variable image is a graphic block in the card designer that gets filled in with a different image for each recipient, pulled from your own data instead of a single static picture you upload once. It works alongside your regular design elements — everything else on the card can stay the same while just this one image changes from piece to piece.

You can use up to 6 variable image slots on a single template. That's a fixed maximum — there's no way to add a seventh slot to the same design.

To turn a graphic block into a variable image slot, name it using one of six fixed merge-tag labels, written as a double-curly-brace merge tag exactly like other personalization fields in the designer:

Each of these six labels corresponds to one variable image slot. Naming a graphic block with one of these merge tags tells the designer that this particular image should be filled in per recipient rather than staying fixed.

Once your template has one or more variable image slots, you map each slot to the data attribute that holds the image for each recipient — a column in your CSV upload, or an attribute in your webhook payload — that contains an image URL. This mapping happens as a dedicated step in your automation or order setup flow, separate from the card designer itself, so each recipient's slot gets filled in from their own row or record when the order runs.

Unverified: the exact in-app screen name and click-path for the image-mapping step were not walked through live for this guide.

Not every recipient will always have a mapped image ready to go, and that's fine — variable image slots have a built-in fallback. If you don't map an image for a recipient, or their image doesn't match the slot's aspect ratio, we'll use your default image instead.

That default image is the one you upload for the slot in the card designer itself, so it's worth choosing a fallback image that still looks good on its own — it may end up being used for some or all of your recipients depending on your data.

Images used in variable image slots — both your default image and any per-recipient images supplied through your data — need to meet a few requirements to print well:

If an uploaded image fails one of these checks, it's rejected with a specific reason — unsupported format, aspect-ratio mismatch, resolution too low, or a corrupt/unreadable file — so you know exactly what to fix before trying again.

If you have questions about setting up variable images or mapping your image data, reach out to your account team or contact support and we'll be happy to help.