Quick Picture Makeovers!

As many of us know, having a shop in Etsy, Artfire or any other handmade selling venue means that having great pictures is a MUST.  We always have to remember that people are buying what is on the picture and that the person has never seen the item in person. Having this in mind having a crispy clear, well presented item is very important. I noticed that there are a few main issues when it comes to photographing, which I will list below:

1- Blurry pictures & yellowish backgrounds

2- Clutter or unnecessary distracting elements in the background of the picture.

3- Selection of background colors that are too similar and that make the item disappear.

These are of course just a few issues out of many, but I decided to start with these and give a few examples of Picture Makeovers that I proposed to all these amazing shop owners. Hope you guys enjoy and learn! :D

Picture Makeover #1

Taking a picture without it being blurry can be a challenge sometimes, therefore my advise is always try to use a tripod or hold your breath for that snap second! :D 

Many times, if the picture is very blurry and you can’t figure out what is going on in the picture, then you know what to do, take the picture again. Like with many things in life, doing it all over again works best, but in some cases you can manage to get away by tweaking things out.

In the example below, I was able to tweak a picture where she just needed a little of  editing to make her picture a bit more crispy, clean & clear! :D

 

Faerie Secret Garden Necklace

by BrightFireBeads.

 

Basically I used Photoshop tools to get rid of that sepia color in the background and the blurriness in the necklace. Do have in mind that Photoshop is not the only solution, there are many sites like Picnic.com that have editing tools for those that don’t have Photoshop. The only difference is that Photoshop does have many tools that these sites don’t have, but for the purpose of light photo editing they do the job.

Going back to the editing of the picture, I basically worked with both the Replace Color tool and the Unsharp Mask tool in order to get the background and the blurriness fixed.  The Replace tool basically gives you the liberty of manipulating whatever color is selected with the eyedrop tool.  I selected the sepia color and worked with the lightness bar in the Replace Color Box. After that, I worked with the Unsharp Mask tool in the Filter tab from the top Menu. This tool gives you the ability to manipulate how much of sharpness you want, versus just doing  Sharpen, or Sharpen More. This gave a bit more edge to that amazing necklace. I hope these simple steps helped you guys in your editing process.

 

Check out some other amazing jewerly

                          by BrightFireBeads !!

     

      

 

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Makeover #2

Clutter or unnecessary distracting elements in the background of the picture is the other factor. Try to always take your pictures in a clean environment with no distracting things in the background. This takes away the attention from the main focus which is you product. You want the prospective buyers to have there eye just on  your item.

Also as far as backgrounds goes, for example, I sell buttons and trims. I use a plain white $.50 cents cardboard as my background. It  looks clean and professional. Some people like to have  patterns and textures to give it a twist, which is great, but only if it doesn’t take away the attention to your item and it’s not so bright and busy that it fighting against your product.

I found this cute shop that had the perfect example of having a distracting element in the picture. I think it looks like some sort of lamp base.

Foxes Embroidered Towel

                                by SewWriteCreations In this particular picture you can go many ways, using the Clone Tool or just Painting with the brush. Given the nature of that one element on the top corner, I decide =d to go further with the regular brush painting, why? because if you try the other option and it does not come out as you want you have to move to your next option, is that simple. The Clone tool works great for literally cloning one area and repeating that same element somewhere else. In this case I wanted to clone the white from the rest of the lamp base but painting it was just easier in this situation. If you decide to play with the Clone Tool method, this is how it’s done:1-Click on the Clone Stamp Tool on the far left tool menu.2- Hover on top of the area you want to clone (in this case the white area) and select ATL button,  a circle with a cross with come up, versus the regular circle symbol. This means you are ready to clone.3- Go around the area that you want to clone like if you were painting on top of it.4-Open a new Layer, in the “Create New Layer” buttons in the bottom of your Layers Window.5-Once you are that new layer opened, with the Clone tool selected in the menu, (you will see this time a circle brush) start painting. You will see the area that you just cloned being painted again. Voala’Is you decide to go with the Brush tool method, this is how it’s done:1- Create a New Layer in the Layers Window.2- Go to the Brush Tool in the far left Tool menu.3- In the upper Menu in the top of the page you will see the brush setting and size, change it to a blurry one like any of these sizes: 45, 65, or 100.4- Set your Foreground Color to be White in the bottom of the tool menu on your far left.5-Start painting the white area that you want. You can always go back of delete that layer without affecting the original picture, that is why we created a new layer :D This method seems less steps for this particular picture, but remember that is not going to always work this way, this is why you need to know who to work with the other tools that Photoshop provides. That is why I decided to post the Cloning option.

Check out some other amazing embroidery

                    by SewWriteCreations !!

      

        

If you need someone to do the job for you, visit my shop QuickPicFix