Photos are Important; Good Photos are Better

Even 10 years ago most emails were picture-less---all text. Now pictures are expected and  a whole lot of text is a sure way to be ignored. And before posting pictures to a website, blog, or email running through a photo editor can ensure your pictures won't be ignored too.

One of the best free editors available is Photoscape from Photoscape.org  This editor allows you to re-size, brighten, sharpen, and apply additional contrast to your photos all in one batch which can be a great help making your work more efficient.

The main way to improve most photo's is to brighten and adjust the contrast. And remember that photos posted should be at a size less than 1000 pixels for efficient loading. I've been to some blogs where the photos posted took so long to load that I left before looking at the content. If you take the time to put up the content be sure to make it viewable.

And when taking product pictures be sure to get in close to your subject. A photo taken close, in good, natural light will shine and attract a lot of attention.

Picture Size

Photographs are a crucial components for websites, blogs, and emails. Photographs not only need to be crisp and close up but taken in the most natural lighting conditions possible to preserve true color, although there is no guarantee that true color will be preserved on whatever device that your customer views the photography.

One issue overlooked is the size of the pictures posted to the web page, blog, or email. Experts are conflicted on the size. Even the big ecommerce sites like etsy, eBay, and blogger differ on the optimal size of photographs.

Photographs uploaded to eBay are advised to be at the largest possible size. There is no maximum size here---just a minimum.

Which means that if you're posting the same photography to your business site, etsy or blog, you'll need to make another batch of photo's that are quite a bit smaller---roughly around 900-1000 px  at maximum. In emails thumbnails or photo's not bigger than 300 px might work better.

Most experts advise posting the picture size to your web coding so that your customer's browser doesn't have a choice to resize and the web page loads faster. Most importantly, include alt and name verbiage so that even your pictures pop up into the search engines and bring more customers to your site.  

More on Pictures

When taking product pictures be sure to get in close and show all the great details as well as all the patina on vintage articles if you want to make an online sale:

And add some interest with an odd angle and some different colored background:



 

Product pictures

Taking pictures of your products to post to the web can be challenging. Here are the top issues that need to be considered.

• The pictures need to show true color: No editing here. Pictures need to be taken in daylight if possible. If the product can't be moved to good light then invest in some good lights that represent daylight.
• The photos need to be clear. Don't skimp on this. Make sure that even if the customer zooms in the picture remains clear.
• The photo should be close enough to give your customer a good view of your product. And, ideally, all angles should be covered. Customers like to know what they're buying. Even if you are selling antiques with patina be sure to show the patina.   
• The background should be uncluttered and not distracting. And make sure the product doesn't blend into the background.
• Products should sparkle. Take a closer look at pictures on the web that catch your eye before all others. Sometimes the pictures are taken at odd angles or with other artistic license. Experiment for some eye catching results.

With fantastic pictures, you'll be selling products in no time.
  

Using Color Adjust in Corel Paintshop Pro

For this morning's example I took a picture that I wasn't quite satisfied with and added dimension and interest by using the Color Adjust tool:

Before



After tweaking with Color Adjust 

Much better--wouldn't you agree?

Top 5 Photo Edits to make your photos pop

Taking good photographs and making them better can be a simple process of running the photos through your editor and performing these five tasks:

1. Crop--Make sure the focus of the photograph is where you want it to be. Photos for the web need to draw the attention in and look good at different resolutions and sizes.
2. Depth of field--wipe out any of the background that you don't want or need.
3. Clarify--bring out the detail in your picture.
4. Correct the hue--digital pictures taken under marginal light conditions can lose some of their color. Pop the color back up to match reality.
5. Resize and optimize--help your pages load quicker, making it easier on your audience to view and web crawlers to find, by optimizing your photos for the web.   

Depth of Field

With the help of a digital photo editor photographs that were taken with busy or bad backgrounds can be adjusted. There are a couple of ways to remove a background in Corel Paintshop Pro; today we'll talk about depth of field.

Bringing the focus to the photo's main subject and making the background disappear can easily be done by clicking on the adjust menu and then depth of field...

The depth of field adjustment is as simple as lassoing your subject with either the circle, square, or freehand tool and allowing the program to do the rest:

  

Photo Optimization

Have you noticed that your blog doesn't quite load as fast as it should? People don't stick around while hefty sized pictures load. Search engines may ignore you if your site takes too long; fortunately, with a little optimization, your photos will load in a flash with little or no reduction in quality.

In Corel Paintshop Pro simply head over to the File menu and click on Export. Point to the JPEG optimizer and drag it out onto your tool bar. Choose your photo, click on the optimizer button and let the wizard handle the details.

An example of a time the optimizer is a handy tool is when you want to use your own picture for the background of your blog. Blogger allows a picture of no more than 299K to be used. You can order the Corel Paintshop Pro program to optimize your photo for no more than 299K and be on your way in no time to a custom blog that matches no one else.  

Corel Paintshop Pro's Smart Photo Fix

Some of your photos (chances are not many) will look gorgeous without any photo editing. This picture is a good example of a photo that might be able to pass muster on its own without editing:

Pretty good. But as I've learned more often than not a good picture can be taken up a notch by some quick photo editing. One quick way to take your photo up a notch in Corel Paint Shop Pro is running the photo through the Smart Photo Fix. Here's the same photo after accepting the program's suggested settings:

The photo's sharpness and brightness settings were brought up a notch making the photo 

pop and glow. The recommended settings usually change your photo for the best in either subtle or big ways, depending on how much help your photo needs. 

If you are creating a special effect in your photo or for photos that are taken in a mist or fog, it is sometimes necessary to back off the recommended settings; an easy thing to do in the Paint Shop Pro's Smart Photo Fix's window. 

So, even if you think your photo is already perfect, run it through the photo editor to make it dazzle.  

To Crop or not to Crop

It can be difficult to get a picture exactly right no matter how much time you take composing it. Fortunately, with a reasonable photo editing program you can take a so-so picture and make it spectacular.

Take this photo for instance.

Could the picture be better? Let's test it out by cropping and moving closer to our bird subjects.

Now there is no doubt what the subject of our picture is and the picture looks much better in thumbnails or on a smaller screen where the tiny birds would be lost.

Try experimenting with cropping pictures for different effects. If you find that a crop doesn't do the picture justice; just hit the undo button and return to your original picture.





Optimize those Photo's

Photo's posted to the web need to meet different specifications than those for print. Web photo's need to optimized for the web; making all pixels count in a compact and tiny package that doesn't suck too much bandwidth, making the loading of your web page a time consuming and tedious process that your customer is forced to wait on.

Even a site or blog page that is loaded with pictures can be made viewable, searchable, and efficient by photo optimization. There are a lot of good programs out there; for very little investment you can even take a bad photograph and make it into a masterpiece by editing and optimizing for the web.

My favorite is Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo. This is a reasonably priced program with a lot of the bells and whistles that come in more hefty priced programs.

Over the next few posts I'll be demonstrating a few tips to make your photo's web ready for your site.