A few months ago I asked for feedback on my shop after being tempted back after a year away by the 20 free listings. The main 2 advices were to work on better photos and descriptions. I did this but on a totally unrelated post the other day which was several months after improving the photos 1 lady said that whilst the prices were fair the photos did not do the items justice. I find photos one of the hardest things to get right and would be grateful for any advice/comments on how I can further improve my photos. Many thanks
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Straight away Iâd say make your photos square. The initial image is always cropped to a square- and personally I think it looks better if theyâre all the same- as soon as I clicked on your ship the first picture stood out because I couldnât really see it:
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Hi. Maybe that was a compliment - meaning that your products were so lovely it was hard to do justice with a photo. Itâs so hard to say exactly what you mean in writing. I think your photos are beautiful (although have to confess that Iâm no expert). The only advice I can add to that above, purely from my own trial and error, is that itâs worth using all 5 photo slots to give as much visual info as you can about your product e.g. closeup of pattern; item from all angles etc.
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Ahhh I see your backgrounds are a bit full on so the eye is not always taken straight to the item.
You also donât use all your 5 slots. Iâd do a plainer background for your first photo. and do only your gloves are in the shot and then keep the last slot for the one with them on your hands with the garden in the background.
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Thank you Susannah and thanks for the picture. When I go on my shop view it looks fine but I can see from this as you say in the first picture there is more table than item. I donât understand why it doesnât look the same in your picture as it does in my shop view? I did crop the photos to square but clearly need to try again
thank you Eileen thatâs good advice!
Awww thank you Beadseedz for your ovely comments. Yes I agree need to use the full quota of photos
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I suspect it was me who passed comments on your photos previously, I didnât mean to upset - I too have struggled with styling photos over the years and sometimes it feels that I have to be just as good at taking photos as I do at making jewellery (it certainly feels at times that I spend more time taking photos than I do making jewellery). As Susannah has said the items are being chopped off in the automatic âfolksy cropâ, on the specific item page it looks fine but on our shop fronts or in search results bits of the image are suddenly missing as folksy have cropped it to square (oh how I cussed when someone pointed that out to me as I had to rephotograph a lot of dangly earrings). I use picasa and they have a âcd coverâ format which is square so no more of the image gets cropped off by folksy.
Having the main photo on a neutral background also helps make it stand out - compare the main photo of your infinity scarf to that of your ear flap hat or knitted bag, your eye is drawn to the scarf as the background doesnât fight for attention. When you are scanning through pages of search results being able to clearly see the item makes people more likely to click on it to look at it in more detail. I can imagine its not always easy to find a large enough neutral space if you have to photograph bigger items like jumpers which makes me glad I work on a tiny scale. Apparently bloggers, magazine editors and the like prefer a neutral background as it makes it easier for them when they are putting together spreads of items - certainly more of my items started getting into gift guides when I switched to a plainer, lighter back ground.
Having done a little knitting I know how involved and time consuming doing textured or lacey knits can be so using one of the photo slots for a close up photo to show that off would set you apart from all the stocking stitch equivalents (most cameras have a macro setting which will help with this - look for a tulip like icon).
I see you have recropped your cable mittens whilst I have been typing - looks so much better - they take up more of the image (so I can see the cabling better) and all the mitten is in shot. Now all I need is a touchy feely computer screen so that I can stroke them.
I hope some of that helps and again sorry for any previous upset caused.
Sasha
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Oh my goodness Sasha you didnât upset me! I am grateful for the feedback received which is why I asked for help. As a result of your comment that I posted again and you can see from the feedback received again on this post that they do still need work and I have taken the comments on board and made some more improvements as a result. Everyone has been so helpful and I will be making more adjustments. Please do feel you have offended or upset me as you most certainly have not and thank you for your brilliant feedback again! I am going to take on board your background comments and work on this. I have found a soft focus button now to fade out the background so will give that a go. Itâs a learning process which is ongoing and I am very grateful for your help 
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@SashaGarrett Iâve just looked at picasa, looks quite good. I usually use Pixlr. Can you please tell me where to find the âcd coverâ format, as some of my previous photos have also been cut off by folksy.
Natasha x
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Once you have selected the photo you want to play about with you should have a series of tabs on the left hand side - one will have a spanner icon on it - click on this tab. The top left option will be crop click on that, you should now see a box with âmanualâ written in it and a drop down arrow next to it, click on the arrow and select âsquare: cd coverâ. You can now drag a box over the bit of the image you want and it will be a perfect square.
Hopefully thatâs clear.
Sasha
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Thank you Sasha for your easy instructions, works very well.
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Photos are so annoying. I certainly didnât think that would be the thing that i would struggle with when setting up my business! I never get my pictures right but some great advice on here.
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I always get great advice on here I find everyone so helpful 
Iâm never sure what makes a good photo! One article will say have an interesting but not distracting background, others will say plain white is best, then do you use props or not?? Iâve started taking mine on our white bookcase and will be sticking with that (without props as I canât think what props to use for cards that wonât look out of place or distracting)
I use Picasa for editing and it easy to use and has all the tools I need (any more and Iâd spend more time trying to get a âperfectâ image than I do making/listing!)
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Anyone looking for interesting photo backgrounds - my local B&Q (so probably other DIY shops too) have wallpaper of stones walls, brick walls and planks, so you can get that âdesigner studioâ look on your kitchen table. My shop photos will be getting a complete makeover this year.
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Thatâs so true Diane I started using my daughter as a model and taking pics outside for interesting backgrounds and good light but it comments above say too busy and stick with white. I am going to give Picasa a go and use the cd cover format as suggested by Sasha Garrett. I have amended some of my photos yesterday but like you need to just accept the best I can do so I donât get too caught up in the photo and the time spent outweighs the time I spend listing 
Great tip for making pictures square, I too will need to implement it!! 
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I did just that and got a roll of fake white washed brick wall. In the end though I didnât like it, and just turned the wall paper round to show the off-white plain side.