Front Page how to get on there?

Shop Talk
41

Hi Joy
do you means the one with the spot or the frogs. They are both on fleece so the design is not that sharp. I will retake both pictures and see if I can improve them. The spots was taken with my old camera and latest additions are on my ipad which I find is a lot sharper. I am not at all offended I would rather nice direction than no direction at all.
Kate

PS can you take another look as I have retaken the two pictures - yes they are better but the fleece design is not a sharp design.

42

Kate It was the spotty one which made my eyes fuzz a teeny bit and I’m sure it’s better now. I do think I rather prefer the 2nd photo of the spotty one as it gives a more interesting view. Maybe someone could comment. https://folksy.com/items/4389586-Taggies-Baby-comfort-blanket-with-ribbons
ps: My eyes were very impressed with the frogs in all respects - super design :slight_smile:

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@KatesKorner when experimenting with picasa have a look at the cropping tools - some of your pictures are mising bits of the item when you are looking at the thumb nails on your shop front (they are fine when you get into the item listing as that allows for non square photos). A particulary bad bit of cropping is ‘gerry giraffi with ribbons’ where the 3 giraffes have lost the top of their heads on your shop front. To get a square crop in picasa once you have selected the photo there will be a grey square top left hand side labled crop, click on that, a drop down menu will appear on the left hand side (it has manual pre selected), click on the little downwards triangle and select square (cd cover). You can then highlight the bit of the image you want and it evens it out to a square image. Not critical to getting on the front page but very useful for potential customers who are scanning through a page of search results.
Whilst using picasa I have found the ‘fill light’ option very useful as it allows me to lighten under exposed photos without bleaching out highlights (that bit is in the contrast tab next to the crop tab top left corner). Both fill light and highlights are sliding buttons so you can just drag it along until it looks right. You might want to try it out on the leg warmer photo as that looks a bit under exposed to my eye. (That said some of the photos from last week’s featured shop looked over exposed to me and that obviously hasn’t held them back, sometimes I think you just need to have the right ‘look’)
I hope you find some of that helpful - my partner is a serious amateur photographer but refuses to take mine for me so I’ve had to learn the hard way and sit through him pointing out all the flaws with mine but I have made it into a couple of gift guides for my efforts. Still don’t get it right most of the time (thankfully with digital it doesn’t matter) and there are still some shocking photos in my shop that I can’t be bothered to re do.
Good luck with the quest for the front page
Sasha

2 Likes
44

Hi Joy
Had another look a spots and have changed the photos around
Thanks
Kate

1 Like
45

Hi Sasha
I know you are probably very busy but I took your advice and have retaken the pictures of the giraffes, if you get a minute have a look and see if you see an improvement.
I have downloaded Picasa and have played with the cropping and lightening and the CD square you mentioned. The only trouble I have at the moment is when I go to look for the photo only my dropbox comes up. Any advice.

Kate :slight_smile:

46

Hi Kate - they look much better (especially if you do a search for giraffe and scan through the results - the ones where the heads are missing are very off putting and someone else’s are headless now) some of the others need a little bit of a tweek in the cropping so cast a critical eye over your shop front to figure out which.
When I plug my memory card from the camera into the computer, if Picasa is open, it automatically imports all the photos (very annoying at times). I am working on a PC not an iPad so this may not work…try:

  1. Open picasa, then top left, above the albums list, there is an import button, click on that to open a new tab, in the import from drop down menu (top left again) select folder and it should then go looking for the appropriate folder or you can send it in the right direction (I don’t know where iPads automatically store photos so i can’t provide any more help at that point)
  2. (this bit will probably be pc specific but there should be an iPad equivalent) if I go to file explorer, and then select the memory card drive, find the photo I want and click on it, the photo opens in windows photo veiwer, I can then select picasa in the drop down ‘open’ menu at the top which opens the photo again but this time in picasa and I can then select edit in picasa from the options at the bottom.
    Hope that helps
    Sasha
47

That is a brilliant idea, thanks!