Tips For Taking More Professional Photos For Your Selling Site
http://www.iwebdevs.net/articles/677/1/Tips-For-Taking-More-Professional-Photos-For-Your-Selling-Site/Page1.html
Jane Dawson
eSources is the Internet's largest database of verified wholesalers, dropshippers, wholesale distributors, importers and manufacturers from the UK and worldwide. In addition to being a wholesale trade resource, the site helps startups and experienced traders in the development and growth of their online and brick and mortar retail businesses. By Jane Dawson
Published on 06/25/2009
This article discusses tips and tricks for optimising your product photos to retain customers and increase sales.
As the old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words reminds us, potential customers need to see your products as clearly and completely as possible.
Your customers may have the option of going to a bricks and mortar store where they can pick up and thoroughly inspect products before purchasing; keep those customers in your online selling space by giving them a similar virtual viewing experience when you can.
When you are setting up your photo, establish a simple, uncluttered background. You want the focus of the picture to be the product you are trying to sell. It is fine to add pictures of your product in a suitable setting, plastic dishes on a picnic table for example, but you still need a strong picture of the product itself. You can create a background by using a bath towel or sheet. Be sure that the background completely covers the area of the picture.
Place your camera on a tripod to be sure it is steady. Add soft lighting. It is usually helpful to place diffusers over the lights to soften the effect. You want to avoid casting harsh shadows on your subject. If you have an unwanted shadow, try adding white paper, tilted at a forty-five degree angle to that side of the product. This prop may create a light reflection that reduces or eliminates the shadow. You should also avoid lighting the product from the back which will cause outlining to occur.
If you get glare bouncing off the product, try shooting at an angle to avoid the reflected light.
You will find that using your cameras view finder can result in a picture where the subject is not centered properly or may be partially cut off. Instead of using the view finder, use the cameras LCD screen to compose your picture. The LCD screen shows you exactly what your picture will look like.
If the item that you are photographing could come in a variety of sizes, you may want to add something to your picture to give a comparison. For example, if you are selling a really small porcelain gift box, you may want to add a quarter to the picture to give a relative size measurement. This method is particularly helpful for gift items and jewelry. You can even add a ruler and line up your product so that the viewer can see exactly how long or wide the product is.
Once your photos are taken, use your computers photo editing program to crop out extraneous background, correct lighting and add any necessary contrast. You may also want to consider adding a watermark to your photo so that it does not get borrowed by someone who does not understand or possibly does not care about copyright law.
A watermark is a faint image of text or anything else that is imprinted on the photo. You can use Photoshop Elements to add a watermark by creating a text layer, typing your text then lowering opacity to fifty percent. Stick the watermark to the photo by saving the photo as a JPEG. For most online photo work, you can save photos as a 100 DPI JPEG image to make transfers easier.
Your customers may have the option of going to a bricks and mortar store where they can pick up and thoroughly inspect products before purchasing; keep those customers in your online selling space by giving them a similar virtual viewing experience when you can.
When you are setting up your photo, establish a simple, uncluttered background. You want the focus of the picture to be the product you are trying to sell. It is fine to add pictures of your product in a suitable setting, plastic dishes on a picnic table for example, but you still need a strong picture of the product itself. You can create a background by using a bath towel or sheet. Be sure that the background completely covers the area of the picture.
Place your camera on a tripod to be sure it is steady. Add soft lighting. It is usually helpful to place diffusers over the lights to soften the effect. You want to avoid casting harsh shadows on your subject. If you have an unwanted shadow, try adding white paper, tilted at a forty-five degree angle to that side of the product. This prop may create a light reflection that reduces or eliminates the shadow. You should also avoid lighting the product from the back which will cause outlining to occur.
If you get glare bouncing off the product, try shooting at an angle to avoid the reflected light.
You will find that using your cameras view finder can result in a picture where the subject is not centered properly or may be partially cut off. Instead of using the view finder, use the cameras LCD screen to compose your picture. The LCD screen shows you exactly what your picture will look like.
If the item that you are photographing could come in a variety of sizes, you may want to add something to your picture to give a comparison. For example, if you are selling a really small porcelain gift box, you may want to add a quarter to the picture to give a relative size measurement. This method is particularly helpful for gift items and jewelry. You can even add a ruler and line up your product so that the viewer can see exactly how long or wide the product is.
Once your photos are taken, use your computers photo editing program to crop out extraneous background, correct lighting and add any necessary contrast. You may also want to consider adding a watermark to your photo so that it does not get borrowed by someone who does not understand or possibly does not care about copyright law.
A watermark is a faint image of text or anything else that is imprinted on the photo. You can use Photoshop Elements to add a watermark by creating a text layer, typing your text then lowering opacity to fifty percent. Stick the watermark to the photo by saving the photo as a JPEG. For most online photo work, you can save photos as a 100 DPI JPEG image to make transfers easier.