Editing Your PhotosDigitally

When you're taking a digital photo or making a scan, you want to save your images in the JPG file format. This is the default file format for most digital cameras and scanners, although some devices give you a choice of other formats (GIF, TIF, and so on). The JPG format is the de facto standard for web images and what eBay expects for your item listings. Given the choice, choose JPG.

With your photos in JPG format, you can easily touch them up with digital photo editing software. What kind of touch-up are we talking about? Here's a list of the most common photo editing operations:

• Lighten up photos shot in low light

• Correct the color in poorly shot photos

• Crop the picture to focus only on the subject at hand

• Resize the image to fit better in your eBay listings

• Decrease the resolution or color count to produce a smaller-sized file

If you're a perfect photographer, you may never need to touch up the pictures you take. But since most of us are far from perfect, it's great to be able to "punch up" the photos we takeand make them as perfect as possible for our eBay listings.

Choosing Image Editing Software

To edit your photos, you need a software program designed to edit digital photographs. There are a lot of programs out there, some free and some tremendously expensive. (Adobe Photoshop, used by many professional photographers, falls into the latter category.) You want something in the middlea low-cost program that's easy to use and includes all the image editing features you need to create quality product photos.

There are a number of easy-to-use, low-cost programs available. The most popular among eBay users include

• Adobe Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com)

• IrfanView (www.irfanview.com)

• Paint Shop Pro (www.corel.com)

• Picasa (picasa.google.com)

• Microsoft Digital Image (www.microsoft.com/products/imaging/)

• Roxio PhotoSuite (www.roxio.com)

Most of these programs cost less than $100 and have similar features. (And Picasa and IrfanView are free!) I personally use Photoshop Elements, but any of these programs should do the job for you.

Resizing Your Pictures for Best Effect

While you're editing, you'll probably need to resize your photographs to best fit within your eBay listings. Most pictures you take with a digital camera will come out too big to fit on a web page without scrolling. Even the smallest digital photos are typically sized at 640 [.dotmath] 480that's 640 pixels wide, which is too wide to fit comfortably on most computer screens.

eBay recommends that you size your image to no more than 400 pixels high by 400 pixels wideunless you're using the Supersize option, which can accept photos up to 800 [.dotmath] 800. This is particularly important if you use eBay Picture Services, which will compress any larger pictures to these dimensions. The results of this compression are yucky-looking pictures, so either resize to fit or use a different picture-hosting servicewhich we'll discuss in a moment.

Personally, I find the 400 pixels-wide requirement okay in most instances, but will sometimes go up to 500 or even 600 pixels wide, depending on the item photographed and the importance of viewing item detail. I won't go over 600 pixels, however.

While you're considering the physical size of the photograph, you should also consider the size of the file that holds the photograph. The bigger the file, the longer it takes to download from the Internet. Create too big a file, and users won't want to wait to view your item listing.

The right file size is something less than 50KBand less is better. Holding the files under the 50KB level keeps the loading time for each photo down to a reasonable level.

Your photo editing software should include settings that let you reduce both the physical size and the file size for your photographs. And, of course, the two go hand in hand: Reduce the physical size, and you'll also reduce the file size.