I’ve spent countless hours over the past several months struggling to improve the product photos in my Etsy shop. My efforts have spanned a whole slew of experiments, from:

• Setting up the actual product to get a good representation of it from different angles
• Finding a background that I could easily set up and break down
• Finding the optimal spot in my home to take advantage of natural lighting
• Configuring the camera for the lighting conditions I’m shooting in, and finally to
• Touching up my photos to make them Etsy-ready

That ’s a lot of different factors to tinker with, especially since time spent on stuff like this is time is time NOT spent making things that can be sold. Happily, I’ve now worked it out to a relatively pain-free photography workflow that works for almost every product that I currently make. And I think the thing that was the final breakthrough for me was using Google’s free photo organizing and editing tool, Picasa3, to prep my photos for final upload to Etsy.

If you like this before and after photo, then read on to see how you too can easily transform your poorly lit, in-need-of-cropping and otherwise dull product photos into ones that are, hopefully, much more pleasing to your prospective customer’s eye!

I’ll just assume that you either have and know the basics about importing photos into Picasa3, or will follow this link to download Picasa3 and then go through the relatively easy instructions on how to use it. Although I have and know the basics of how to use Adobe Photoshop, I use Picasa3 because it’s a lighter application that doesn’t bring my laptop speed to a miserable crawl, and it’s so quick and easy to use.

I put together a crude, soundless video (because sadly those are the only kinds of videos I know how to make) showing me using a mere five features in Picasa to transform the before photo above, into the after photo below it. Here it is, for better or for worse, followed by a written summary of what I did.

The Process
Note: I use a digital camera that allows me to set the custom white balance on it.

Not shown in the video:

• Set the custom white balance on the camera.
• Positioned product in same lighting that custom white balance was set for, and snapped away.
• Imported my photos into Picasa3, creating a new folder for the product.

Shown in the video:

1. Double-clicked to select a photo to work with.
2. Used the Crop tool in the Basic Fixes tab. I chose to keep the dimensions of the photo the same proportions as the original photo, but for Etsy you could also consider cropping the photo square.
3. Went to the Tuning tab, and used the sliders to adjust:
   • Highlights – amplifies bright spots
   • Fill Light – adds foreground light to balance photos with dark backgrounds
   • Shadows – provides additional depth or contrast by darkening shadows
4. Used the Zoom tool to take a closer look at the photo details, and repeated step 3 for more fine tuning. For me, it helps to have the actual product sitting next to me so I can make sure the colors I’m editing to are as accurate as possible, at least on my own monitor.
5. Exported the photo, making both the photo and file size smaller for web use AND adding an “eleen.com” watermark. I export my photos as 800 x 600, which makes them big enough for Etsy buyers and blog readers to take a close look at the detail of the product but small enough to make them load more quickly. The non-exported file was 4.7mb, whereas the exported file is a mere 62kb.

Other features I regularly use:

I’d say that all the other features in Picasa3 are just as easy to use as the ones above and are worth playing with to make your photo the best that it can be (without using a more high-powered tool and/or spending too much more time). Some other features I regularly use on my photos are Straighten, Sharpen and, if there’s a speck of lint I overlooked, Retouch.

That’s about it! Except maybe that I highly recommend learning Picasa’s keyboard shortcuts to help you quickly scan through and select the subset of photos you want to work with, delete the ones you don’t and move through your keepers.

More Info

For other great posts on improving product photos for your Etsy or other online shop or portfolio:

• These first two really set me off in the right direction when I first set out to work on my product photography
  • Shoot to Sell: Taking Better Photos for eBay, Etsy & Instructables by Photojojo
    
  • Photographing for Success by Etsy

• And here are some great tips from my fellow Full Time Etsy Crafters street team members!
  • A slew of tips from Mu-Yin Jewelry
  • How Do I Take My Product Photos? A Tutorial.

One of my goals this year is to bump the quality of my photos up another notch, so I would looooove to hear pointers about techniques that any of you might be using to make your photos look good too!

Similar Posts:

• Figuring out how to get better product shots
• Magnetic cuteness from Button Arcade
• Promote your Etsy shop on Facebook

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