Chap - photo question

[dutchjazz]

Chap - you had mentioned in another thread regarding Etsy thumbnail photos to try and get the entire item in the picture.  For long items, I am having trouble.  I know you take your pictures in a confined area and you are still able to get the entire item in the thumbnail.  I tried taking the photos landscape, but then I get stuff that's in the room in the photo and I don't want that.  I also tried changing the size through the app image size and that's not working.

How do you do it?

Also, on Jeremy's thread with the banners, you're Etsy banner is much bigger than mine.  I made mine according to the size stated on Etsy  and it's so tiny.

How did you do yours?

Thanks for any help.  As always, I really appreciate it.

[val2525]

I'm not Chap but you can take pics landscape and then just crop out/blur out/whatever the background. Most photo editing programs will do this. Several programs are free. I use Photoshop and use the magic wand feature to "highlight" the background, then fill in with 100% white.

[dutchjazz]

Val - like you I have a mac. I take the pictures landscape and crop them in photo, but they still don't fit in the thumbnail.

I asked Chap, because she has such a small space to photo and her thumbnails are fine. I have a whole room and can't get it right.

I've never done photoshop. I might have to check it out, if I can't figure out another way.

Thanks!

[chapeaunoir]

dutchjazz My method is a real amateur kludge but the results come out OK.

The Etsy photo space is just over 4 x 4, not quite square, and it needs to be 1000 mp a side or the quality suffers. As you know, once the image is uploaded to the thumbnail, you can resize it there, but it always uploads to its minimum size, so you can make it bigger, but not smaller, so I have to allow for both.

I take the photo, then knock out the clutter in the background, then I do one of two things - if it's a really long thin item I do a side by side collage with the item and a close-up detail to get closer to a square shape, then put a border on it sufficient to fill the space. If it's a fairly square shape already, then I just put a border on it sufficient to fill out the rest of the space. I just use tools like Picassa and the Microsoft image editor that comes with Office, so my border-making is equally kludgy. If you use something like Photoshop it'll probably be easier. I have a tough time grasping how layers and vectors work, though - don't know why as I'm good at physics - so I've given up on software like Photoshop, but that's probably an easier solution.

If I had space, I would simply back up until I had the item already framed with enough space to size it to the little square. I see some sellers do that, but then long items tend to be really small.

[dutchjazz]

Thanks Chap. I use my iphone to take pics and I have a couple of apps that I use for my photos. Image Size resizes the photo, super easy and the other one Pics Art, I think would be like photoshop. I can do a border on that. I never thought of doing that. I guess it's something I'm going to have to play with for longer items. Again, thanks.