Website Photos

[lottysloft]

Hi everyone

I have just opened a new online store called LottysLoft.com and I would like advice on the following:

What is the best and least expensive software for editing and resizing photos for the website?

And..... for those of you with an online shop. Should I buy a light cube and powerful lights? I am having difficulty taking photos of my Miss Molly range. It's my husbands products and they are really really nice, but the photos we have taken are not so great. Our camera is a fabulous and very recommended camera, it the lighting and reflection is the problem.

Thanks

Karen
www.lottysloft.com

 

[ElanMan]

Hi Karen,
For editing and resizing photos, I'd recommended Irfanview, available from http://www.irfanview.com/ .
It's free and also lets you create thumbnails in a batch.
Really simple to use too.
Hope that helps.

 

[PrettyPaws]

Agree, I've used that too.

 

[lottysloft]

Hi there, thanks for the recommendation - I am delighted!

You've just saved me a £75 photoshop fee.

Thanks Karen
LottysLoft.com

 

[Page]

Lighting is probably the issue.

Buy a book call taking photos for ebay or something like that. Very good and is all about product photography. You may not need to buy lighting just change how you take the pics.

Gimp is a powerful freee software but may be more than you need for now.

 

[Dawg]

I'm not sure that lighting is the issue. Looking at some of the Molly items, it seems they are long and multi-unit items strung together.
I think it would be worth your while either getting your head around a bit of Photoshop, or Gimp, and using the time you might give to learning about lighting, to learn about basic photo editing.
Below is a before and after pic of a hanging item, with an inset to give greater detail. Standard digital camera, on camera flash, no tripod, white A3 paper background and 10 mins in photoshop*.


I think it's an approach you might think about.

* I hate it when people say things like '10 mins in Photoshop/Joomla/Zenbleedingcart', when it takes them 10 mins, but if you are not used to Photoshop/Joomla/Zenbleedingcart it takes longer. It's meant to be encouraging...

 

[anthonylane13]

Standard digital camera, on camera flash, no tripod, white A3 paper background and 10 mins in photoshop*.

I agree - I had to scan a lot of the images I use on my site from the catalogues, with varying success. You will be amazed what can be achieved in photoshop (or similar quality image editor) with a little time investment and practise. I edit ALL my images before posting to my site for 2 reasons: firstly to make the image look nice and fit in with the site theme, and secondly to make the image file as small as possible without noticeable loss of quality. This reduces page load time and is gentler on bandwidth use.
I've heard gimp and irfanview are good although never used them myself.

Do a search on image editing freeware + (your operating system) and you may be surprised at your choices.

Your site looks very nice by the way.

 

[Wayne47]

Hi,

If you would like some help with your images please don't hesitate to contact me for any advice, I could maybe help you set your camera up or give you lighting/photoshop advice.

Regards Wayne (Please view my web site to see some recent images)

 

[Fuzzy]

We use Irfanview all the time and we have loads of images on our site and new one replacing the old every week, so it has been a lifesaver for me, especially if you want to do a batch.

 

[lottysloft]

Hi Everyone

Really appreciate your help and advice - it has been amazing. I have downloaded Iranview and have been resizing photos. Have not worked out how to do a batch yet, but I will do soon.

Wayne, thanks for your comments, could you look at one photo on my site - search Set of 3 Shabby Chic Wooden Hearts. This is probably one of my worst photos and I would like to show a close up of one of the hearts within the photo. I've been cropping and cutting and pasting and no luck.

Wayne, any advice would be great.

Thanks

Karen
LottysLoft.com

 

[Fuzzy]

If you want help with batch conversion, just shout - done it soooo many times now

 

[markie]

A quick note on lighting:

If you are taking photos with a digital camera of items against a white background and you notice that many of them have a grey sheen, or look overcast then your issue is not necessarily with lighting per se but with the white balance.

A modern digital camera uses sensors to measure the amount of white and black (light and dark) in a photograph and then sets the histogram (light balance graph) between these two (it also does this with the colours but they are not your issue). So if you have a photograph that has a lot of white, say 80% of the image the camera will increase the density by shifting the white balance (basically it makes the white in the image more cloudy/grey by increasing its density - this also affects every pixel in the image giving the entire thing a slight cast). Normally the camera gets a good match as it takes a multiple of readings (called densometer readings) and averages the result. In this case it will always perform badly as there is simply too much white, the same effect happens when you attempt to take images in a theatre or at a concert where the density of light changes too frequently.

If your camera supports user defined functions then I would reccomend manually setting the white balance (take a photo of the white background in the lighting conditions you are to use, then go to your menu and use this photo for your white balance, the camera will then know what is white in your picture). If you cannot set the white balance try using the different functions or settings it does have (landscape, sports, or using different lighting - tungsten, sunny, cloudy settings as they -may- help).

Try to use as much natural (or strong white artifical) lighting as possible as your camera takes the readings before the picture, so a flash can in fact cause more problems than it solves (not to mention that a built-in flash causes a lot of bounceback to the camera so bad reflections can be an issue.).

In the end practice and experimentation costs nothing but time.

If scanning images be aware that most scanning software has the ability to change the density readings before scanning by using the advanced functions, taking a preview and selecting the grey as the lowest limit of density it will in fact reduce that to white/nothing.

You can do all of this before you get to photoshop. If you are taking hundreds of pictures buy a camera you can change the white balance in. This may cost you a couple of hundred pounds but might be worthwhile.

 

[Dawg]

Good post Markie.

 

[JadeRose]

A good place to look for free or inexpensive software is download .com

Regards JR

 

[awebapart.com]

resizing photos for the website... our camera is a fabulous and very recommended camera

If you are taking a lot of photos just for the online shop, then you might find it quicker and easier setting your camera to take photos at just 640x480 resolution. Taking photos at too high a resolution (picture size), with the highest megapixel camera you have, then shrinking them down afterwards on the PC can be time consuming, and it can sometimes make your shrunken photos appear blurry due to the image processing step. It really depends on what you are photographing, how many, how much time you have, your camera, your lighting setup, and what you think of the final quality produced by whichever process you evaluate.

Are you having to upload your own separate thumbnail images, or does your ecommerce system automatically generate the thumbnail image from the large product image? Having an ecommerce system which autogenerates the thumbnails can save a lot of time.

 

[matt smith]

This is such a useful thread. I have been working on lots of new images for my site. So bottom line is Photoshop worth buying as you can get really good photos as a result and save on the cost of employing a photographer?

Thanks

Matt
www.ethicalpartybags.com

 

[Page]

No need to buy photoshop even - just get gimp for free.

But a good camera with the right settings can save you lots of time in post shot processing in gimp etc.

When a mate did a demo of this I thought stuff it and went out and got a nikon d40 - dead easy to operate.

 

[Dawg]

Gimp is free and good. Gimpshop is similar, free and feels more like Photoshop. You can get an older version of Photoshop Elements from Amazon for £20. Should be OK, Gimp probably better.
If anyone is considerng buying a camera the Fujifilm S5700 is a real bargain. Really good little digital SLR type for just over £100. Don't waste your money on Nikons; like Sony you pay for the advertising and image.

 

[Page]

I won't get in to a camera debate not my area of expertise - but there is a difference between a slr type and slr - we used an employee's slr type for a while - the nikon is dead easy to operate which for me was a factor.