How to Get Villager Photos - Animal Crossing: New Horizons Guide - IGN (2024)

This Animal Crossing: New Horizon guide details how to get personal photos from your villagers, as well as the best acts that you can perform in order to increase the likelihood of getting a photo opportunity.

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Looking for something in particular? Be sure to click the links below to jump to...

• What are Photos?
  • Photos vs Posters
  • Can You Get Photos of Non-Villager Special Characters?
• How to Get Villager Photos
  • How Do I Find Out What My Friendship Level Is?
  • Ways to Increase Your Friendship With a Villager
• The Best Ways to Farm Photos
  • The Iron Wall Lamp Trick
  • The Pearl Stack Trick
• Other Ways to Get Villager Photos
  • Visiting Your House
  • Birthday Present
• Can You Customize Villager Photos?

What are Photos?

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Photos, or Pictures, are incredibly rare and unique items that are symbols of your friendship with one of your Villagers. They are small, framed photos that can be displayed either on flat surfaces or hung from the wall. They can also be interacted with to learn the Villager’s birthday and their favorite saying.

In short, if you have a Villager’s Photo, that means you share a very close friendship with them.

Photos vs Posters

Photos are NOT to be confused with the somewhat similar Posters. Posters use the same artwork as Photos, but are much larger, can only be hung on walls, have no frame, and cannot be interacted with to learn a Villager’s personal information.

To get the Poster of any character in the game, you’ll need to travel to Harv’s Photopia house, then summon them into the room with an amiibo figure or amiibo card while in Decorating mode. You can then order the Poster from Nook Shopping. This works with Villagers and Special Characters alike!

The exception is any Villager currently living on your island. In these cases, you can also summon them via a special Villager menu option only available from the Decorating Mode in Harv’s Photopia.

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Can You Get Photos of Non-Villager Special Characters?

Yes, you can get Photos of Special Characters like Isabelle, Flick, Celeste, and more! However, they all involve some effort to acquire, and for the majority of Special Characters, you’ll need the Happy Home Paradise DLC and an amiibo of them.

• If you want the Photos of Isabelle, Tom Nook, or Timmy and Tommy, you can get their Photos via the NookLink companion app. Head to our page on How to Get Isabelle’s Photo for more; the NookLink method there also works for the Nook family!
• If you want Photos of Rover or Jingle, you can complete a specific task based on May Day or Toy Day, respectively. Follow those links to learn more.
• Brewster’s Photo can be given to you by Blathers in the quest that unlocks The Roost. Since this quest starts mid-way into the game, it will likely be the first Photo a player will receive. Visit the How to Find Brewster and Get The Roost page for details.
• For all Special Characters, including ones you normally don’t meet in the game, you can design a Vacation Home for them in the Happy Home Paradise DLC by summoning them with an amiibo card or figure. Head to our page on How to Get Special Character Photos to learn how to do this.

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The information in this section regarding the game’s Friendship mechanics was discovered by Alexis#8717, astronomyfortwo#4112, Burandii#7476, FCFCQQQ#0033, Ninji#1624, and Stoney#9215, via data mining, as seen in @yuecrossing and oraloo#0360’s Ultimate Friendship Handbook.

Getting a Villager’s Photo is based entirely around ACNH’s Friendship system. This is an invisible system that determines how close your friendship is with each Villager. The more you interact with a Villager, the higher your Friendship becomes, and the more things you can do together overall.

The chance to get a Villager’s Photo is opened once you reach the second-highest level of Friendship with them, Tier 5, and the likelihood of receiving one from them as a gift is increased the stronger your Friendship with them is.

However, increasing your Friendship with a Villager and receiving a Photo from them have different requirements. A Photo can only be given in three situations:

• As a reward for giving them a Daily Gift that would sell for 750 Bells or more at Nook’s Cranny.
• Birthday Gifts, which provide the single most likely chance for you to receive a Photo in one single action. We break down this process in a section further down the page.
• Finishing quests where you’ve performed extra well, including completing a three minute Treasure Hunt, giving Medicine to a sick Villager immediately after you were told by another Villager that they were sick, catching a specific Fish / Bug a Villager asked you for, and returning a lost item to a Villager before they ask you to find it (among others).

You’re more likely to receive a Photo if the gift is given to you in the mail (which is guaranteed on Birthdays), and/or if you give them something that’s been wrapped in Wrapping Paper. These two factors are behind the two Photo Farming tricks outlined further down the page.

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How Do I Find Out What My Friendship Level Is?

Unfortunately, there’s no direct and clear way to tell what your Friendship level is with a Villager, or how close you are to getting to a higher tier where you unlock more things to do with them. That said, you can tell roughly what Tier you’re at with them based on what new thing you can do together:

• Tier 1: They can run up to you and give you items.
• Tier 2: You can give them one gift a day.
• Tier 3: They can nickname you, and sell you items.
• Tier 4: They’ll let you change what their catchphrase is.
• Tier 5: You can set a personal greeting with them.
• Tier 6: They’ll run up to you and offer to buy items from you.

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Tier 5 is the minimum you’ll need to have a chance at receiving a Photo from a Villager, no exceptions. From there, the likelihood of receiving a Photo increases the stronger your friendship is/

The other method to find out your Friendship level is Katrina over at Harv’s Campsite, immediately to the left of the entrance near the pond with a waterfall. You can ask her to look into your friendship with a Villager once a day for 1,000 Bells. If your Friendship is below Tier 5 or so, she’ll then offer to bless your Friendship for 10,000 Bells, which will increase the Friendship a little bit.

If your Friendship with them is already quite high, she won’t offer to bless it, meaning it’s very likely that you now have the chance to get a Photo from them.

Ways to Increase Your Friendship With a Villager

To increase your Friendship with a Villager, you’ll need to positively interact with them. Said interactions include the following:

• Talking to them at least once a day.
• Selling them an item if they ask it from you.
• Catching fleas off them with your Net.
• Gifting them an item once a day (especially if wrapped), including on their birthday.
• Completing a quest or other activity with them, such as catching a fish/bug, doing a treasure hunt, or delivering an apology gift.
• Cheering them up if they’re visibly angry or sad when walking about.
• Ask Katrina to increase your Friendship with a Villager, available at Harv’s Campsite.

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Conversely, there are four actions you can do that decrease your Friendship:

• Angering them by pushing or running into them.
• Upsetting them by slapping them with your Net until they complain at you.
• When they’re sick, saying you have Medicine when you actually don’t have any.
• During Quests where you deliver an apology gift, failing to deliver it on time, especially if it’s opened or if you sold it. This only applies to the quest giver, not the recipient.

If you upset a Villager by running into them or slapping them with a net, talk to them again and apologize. You’ll have a 1-in-5 chance of them accepting your apology and restoring your Friendship as if you hadn’t upset them in the first place.

With that said, there are a few interactions that you may think would increase or decrease your Friendship with a Villager, but actually don’t do anything! These include:

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• Sending them letters via the Airport’s card stand.
• Ignoring them in any way, including running away when they run up to talk with you.
• Talking with them so much that they appear annoyed with you.
• Hitting them with a Shovel or any of the three Axes.
• Making them fall into a hole with a Pitfall Seed.

This section, in particular, takes its information from datamining by Ahri#1337, asteriation#6884, sock#9443, Soleil#6271, and Stoney#9215, as seen in @yuecrossing’s Gifting Guide.

As you may have noted above, there are only two reliably repeatable actions for increasing your Friendship with a Villager: the first time you talk to them on a day, and gifting them an item once a day. Talking to them needs no explanation, so here we’ll discuss the best way to quickly increase your Friendship with one of your Villagers by gifting them one item a day.

The tricks that we’ll be describing here are the Iron Wall Lamp Trick and the Pearl Stack Trick.

Both of these tricks work with the way ACNH has a chance of rewarding you with a Photo if you gift a Villager an item that sells for 750 Bells or more at Nook’s Cranny. A resell value of 750 Bells is the minimum amount required for a Villager’s Thank You Gift to potentially be a Photo, assuming your Friendship is at Tier 5 or higher.

The Iron Wall Lamp Trick

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If you’re concerned about your Villager replacing some of their Furniture with the objects you’re gifting them with this trick, you can fix it if you’ve rolled credits in the Happy Home Paradise DLC. Read our page on How to Change a Villager's House for more.

The Iron Wall Lamp Trick is the most common and well-known exploit for farming Photos. The principle is that you craft a wall item that sells for 750 Bells or more at Nook’s Cranny, then wrap it with Wrapping Paper and give it to your Villager.

While this method doesn’t have the outright highest likelihood of getting a Photo in return, it is the one that increases your actual Friendship level the most. It is therefore useful if you want to just increase your Friendship to Tier 5 so that you unlock the chance to get a Photo from that Villager in the first place.

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We recommend Iron Wall Lamps for this because you can get their DIY from Nook’s Cranny by buying the Wildest Dreams DIY set. As a wall object, they’re unintrusive if your Villager does decide to display them, although they do eventually start taking up their Inventory space and put their existing Furniture at risk of being thrown out.

Iron Wall Lamps aren’t the only items you can use for this, either. Here’s a complete list of potential candidates you can easily craft or assemble if you have their DIY Recipes:

• Wrapped stacks of Fruit - Value Varies. At least two non-native Fruit, 1x Wrapping Paper.
• Iron Doorplate - 1,500 Bells. 2x Iron Nuggets.
• Snowflake Wreath - 1,600 Bells. 4x Snowflakes.
• Iron Wall Rack - 2,450 Bells. 3x Iron Nuggets, 1x Clay.
• Crest Doorplate - 3,000 Bells. 4x Iron Nuggets.
• Iron Wall Lamp - 3,400 Bells. 4x Iron Nuggets, 2x Clay.

How to Perform the Iron Wall Lamp Trick

If you intend to use Iron Wall Lamps, purchase the Wildest Dreams DIY Set. You can get this DIY Recipe by interacting with the cabinet in Nook’s Cranny and buying it for 6,980 Bells. It does first require buying the DIY For Beginners set and completing the original Customization Tutorial with Tom Nook, though.

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Gather the Materials. You’ll need 4 Iron Nuggets and 2 Clay if you’re making Iron Wall Lamps, both of which you can get by whacking Rocks with your Shovel. The Snowflake Wreath of course uses Snowflakes, which can only be collected during winter.

Go to a Workstation and craft the Iron Wall Lamp. It’ll be among the other Iron DIYs in the menu, but the Snowflake Wreath will of course be with the other winter-themed items.

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Wrap the Iron Wall Lamp with Wrapping Paper. You can buy Wrapping Paper from the cabinet in Nook’s Cranny. Wrapping the gift will slightly increase your chance of getting a Photo, but the color of the Wrapping Paper doesn’t actually matter at all.

Give the gift to the Villager. If your Friendship is at least Tier 5, you’ll have at least a 5.1% chance of getting a Photo in return right there on the spot. Stronger friendships can increase this to as much as 8.67%!

If your Villager has displayed any Iron Wall Lamps inside their homes, you can get rid of them by rolling credits in the Happy Home Paradise DLC, which unlocks the ability to redecorate a Villager’s home on your island.

The Pearl Stack Trick

While the Iron Wall Lamp is often stated as the best method for increasing your Friendship with a Villager and getting a Photo from them, the method with the highest chance of receiving a Photo in return is actually the Pearl Stack Trick.

The Pearl Stack Trick is a slight modification on what was known as the Fruit Stack Trick. However, using Fruit for this was patched in an Update, so we chose Pearls as a replacement. Pearls have been tested and confirmed to work with this method.

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The Pearl Stack Trick works by gifting a Villager a stack of multiple items, items that individually sell for 750 Bells or more at Nook’s Cranny. You'll actually only gift one to your Villager, leaving the rest behind. When doing this while your Inventory is full, your Villager is forced to mail their Thank You Gift to you.

The Mail bonus results in a higher likelihood of getting a Photo than the Iron Wall Lamp trick can do. Further, since Pearls can be stacked in your Inventory, a Villager will never display them in their homes!

Pearls aren’t the only objects you can use for this. Below is a list of items that are worth 750 Bells or more at Nook’s Cranny, can be stacked in your Inventory, and can be gifted to Villagers, thus acting as legitimate alternatives:

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• Giant Clam - 900 Bells
• Gold Rose - 1,000 Bells (a picked flower, not the entire plant)
• Pearl - 10,000 Bells
• Gold Nugget - 10,000 Bells
• Elegant Mushroom - 10,000 Bells
• Rare Mushroom - 16,000 Bells

We recommend Pearls overall because they’re the most accessible: you can keep searching your island’s waters until you get one, or get a Scallop so that Pascal may trade you one for it (plus you can get a lot of Bells from the Sea Creatures you’ll probably catch along the way).

The others are either rare, can’t be gained indefinitely in a single day, or are only available during certain times of the year. Since you’ll spend a lot of time swimming though, you could also search for Giant Clams as well, since more shells will spawn on the beach while you’re out in the water.

How to Perform the Pearl Stack Trick

If you intend to use Pearls for this trick, equip a wetsuit and start diving in the waters until you get two Pearls. You’re looking for a bubble column of infrequent, discordant bubbles. If the underwater shadow is small but stationary, it may be a Pearl, while if it’s medium-sized and moves a bit, it may be a Scallop. Your first Scallop catch of the day can be immediately traded with Pascal for either a Pearl or a Mermaid DIY recipe.

Remember, you'll need at least two Pearls for this to work so that you can make a stack of them in your Inventory.

Of course, if you intend to gift your Villager something like Giant Clams or Gold Nuggets, you’ll need to find them elsewhere on your island.

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DO NOT WRAP THE ITEMS! This will combine them all into a single item, which prevents this trick from working as well as it does!

Fill the entire rest of your Inventory until there are no free slots left. The easiest way to do this is to take out 100 Bells from your Bell Wallet until your Inventory is full. You can then put them back into your Bell Wallet once you’ve gifted the Pearl stack.

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Talk to your Villager and gift them your Pearl stack. You’ll actually only give them one of the Pearls, and leave the rest in your Inventory, keeping all the slots filled.

Your Villager will then send you their Thank You Gift in the mail. This is because your Inventory is still full, leaving no space for them to give you their gift immediately.

Open your Mailbox the next day and see if you got a Photo. If your Friendship is at least Tier 5, you’ll have at least a 6% chance of receiving their Photo in the mail. Stronger friendships can make this as likely as 10.2%!

So why is the Pearl Stack Trick the best method for getting a Villager Photo over the Iron Wall Lamp Trick?

1. Having a full Inventory forces the Villager to send you their Thank You Gift in the Mail, and Mail-received Thank You Gifts have an increased likelihood of being a Photo.
2. While Wrapping a stack of items also increases the likelihood of getting a Photo, the “Wrapped Bonus” is not as much as the “Mail Bonus”.
3. Furniture and anything else that can’t be stacked in your Inventory run the risk of being displayed in a Villager’s home, or worse filling up their inventory and forcing them to throw their original furniture away to make space!
4. Objects that can be stacked in your Inventory will never be put on display by your Villager (except Flowers and Tools), making them ideal gift options.

Other Ways to Get Villager Photos

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Alongside outright farming for Photos, there are two scenarios where you can potentially got Photos as well: a Villager inviting themselves over to your home, or by giving them a Birthday present! Both are explained in the two sections below.

Visiting Your House

As of Update 2.0, it's now possible for Villagers to swing by your House. If your Friendship level is high enough, then a Villager may walk about pondering, and decide to invite themselves to your home if you accept it. They MUST invite themselves to your home from outside: them arriving unannounced while you're already inside does not count for this.

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When you're in your home, talk to the Villager a few times until they give you a gift. For whatever reason, this has an extraordinarily high chance of being their Photo, even if you have already gotten their Photo before! It's about the most reliable method of getting a Photo that doesn't involve farming for one.

At the moment it's currently unknown what the requirement is for Villagers to invite themselves over to your home. Given the nature of this request and the high likelihood of receiving a Photo however, it's likely that you need to have a Tier 5 Friendship in order for it to become available.

Birthday Present

This section also takes its information from datamining by Ahri#1337, asteriation#6884, sock#9443, Soleil#6271, and Stoney#9215, as seen in @yuecrossing’s Gifting Guide.

A Birthday present is the single most likely point in time for you to get a Photo as a Thank You Present. This is because the Thank You Present is given to you in the mail the next day, giving you the Mail Bonus, but you can also wrap this present with Wrapping Paper to get a Wrapping Paper Bonus.

In addition to this, you also need to give the right gift for their Birthday. The list of items eligible for a possible Photo in return are as follows:

• Any clothing or other item that you're also wearing when you give them the present.
• The Birthday Cake or Mom's Homemade Cake items. No other cake is eligible.
• Any edible items, such as Fruit, Coconuts, or Turnips.
• Any Bugs, Fish, Fossils, or stacks of Shells or Wasp Nets, so long as they sell for 2,000 Bells or more at Nook's Cranny. Sea Creatures DO NOT count.
• Any other items that sell for 500 Bells or more at Nook's Cranny, outside of garbage, weeds, or Rusted Parts.
• Anything they already own does NOT count.

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Of these options, a single fruit wrapped in Wrapping Paper is the easiest gift you can give that can give a Photo in return. It can even be your island's native fruit!

Can You Customize Villager Photos?

Yes, Villager Photos can be Customized! You’ll have two options for this: using a Workbench and customizing it with 1 Customization Kit, or visiting Cyrus at Harv’s Campsite and having him customize it.

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You have eight different frames to choose from, displayed in the screenshot above. Choose the one that you think fits best!