Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Photos Matter (Use Editing)

One of the key things that people on Etsy were saying 4 years ago and still today was that photos are soooo important. A bad picture of a great product can cause it not to sell, and at the same time, a great photo of a product in a highly competitive market can make you stand out from the crowd.

My wife has always done my Etst photography for me, for a few reasons.

1 She has a nice camera, and an eye for the right shot

2 She can edit.

In the age of digital photography it can be a major Faux Pas not to edit your photos. No one is perfect, and the odds that you nailed the perfect shot, just arent likely, that combined with time of day, sunlight, background and the like, can make it difficult to get what you are looking for.

I took this picture in color with the intent of doing this to it. After some googling, and a few tutorials (yes I am slow) It finally looks how I imagined it when I took it. when you take the picture, have an idea of what you want the final result to look like.

So if you arent amazed at the pictures that you have on your site currently, you really need to look into editing them. After all if they dont wow you, how are they ever going to wow your customers?

I am still learning, and sharing as I go, but if you aren't getting the sales you want, take a look at your photos and ask yourself if they could be better.

8 comments:

  1. I agonize over the editing process. I have a camera that cost almost as much as my car and still wrestle with it!

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  2. I've found that photography is a constantly evolving thing for my shop. The initial pictures were TERRIBLE (if you want a good laugh, look at my first sales), but they get better every time I re-do them. I'm doing a big overhaul right now, and I hope it's the last one for a long time.

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  3. I am always trying to learn how to edit pictures and not just my Etsy pics but the pics I take of my kids also. I still suck at it. One day I hope to figure it out.

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  4. i am constantly reshooting my shop photos and trying new things. i am still not 100% satisfied, it is a process that's for sure!

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  5. I am trying to learn without getting myself crazy about how bad my photos look.

    Found you through teams.

    Please stop by and link up at www.theoldblockhouse.blogspot.com

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  6. LOVE that photo of the yellow caution tape on the B&W background! I am obsessive about editing and have a slight addiction to Photoshop. It's amazing what you can do.

    xo,
    melissa

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  7. I've been working on editing...but now what about photo storage? I guess it's more for blogging than for etsy, but what do you do if after all of that work you have to reduce the quality in order to fit it anywhere usable? (I know quality reduction isn't evident for many photos, but for others it is very evident.)

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  8. most of the photos for my blog are taken with my cell phone, very low quality, but they are displayed very small as well. If you are going to load photos that need to look good, resizing is a good option, shrinking can reduce quality, but if you use a resizing feature, you can keep a lot of the quality and get a smaller file. External storage is getting crazy cheap too if you are looking for somewehre locally to store your photos in a library format.

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