Edit the Image File

After you've taken your digital photo (typically in a JPG-format file, the graphics file type of choice for eBay), you can do a little editing to "clean it up" for eBay use.

Things to Edit

What kinds of editing are we talking about? Here's a short list:

• Lighten up photos shot in low light.

• Correct the color and tint in poorly shot photos.

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

• Resize the image to fit better in your eBay listings. (Too big a picture won't fit within a normal Web browser window.)

• Decrease the resolution or color count to produce a smaller-sized file. (Files that are too big will take longer to load onto a bidder's PCand may even be rejected by eBay.)

Graphics Editing Software

How do you do all this? You need an image-editing program. Although hard-core picture fanatics swear by the extremely full-featured (and very expensive) Adobe Photoshop CS, there are several lower-cost programs that perform just as well for the type of editing you'll be doing. These programs include the following:

• Adobe Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com)

• IrfanView (www.irfanview.com)

• Paint Shop Pro (www.corel.com)

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

• Roxio PhotoSuite (www.roxio.com)

Most of these programs cost under $100 and have similar features. Or, if you'd rather not muck around with this sort of picture editing, you can always have somebody else do it for you; here again, FedEx Kinko's is a good place to start.

"Mike Sez"

My favorite of these programs is Adobe Photoshop Elementsnot to be confused with the much more expensive (and harder to use) Adobe Photoshop CS. The Elements program is extremely easy to use, with one-button operation for most common photo editing tasks. To learn more, check out my companion book Bad Pics Fixed Quick (Que, 2004).

Resizing Your Photos

While you're editing, remember to resize your photo to best fit within your eBay listing. (Most pictures you take in a digital camera will come out too big to fit on a Web page without scrolling.) eBay recommends that you size your image to no more than 400 pixels wide by 400 pixels tallunless you're using the Supersize option, which can accept photos up to 800 x 800.

"Mike Sez"

Personally, I find 400x400 pictures to be a tad on the small side for some items. I see no harm in going up to 500 or even 600 pixels wide, especially if viewing the detail of the object is important. Note, however, that if you use a larger size for a picture hosted with eBay Picture Services, it will automatically be resized down to 400 pixels (on the longest side), which sometimes results in distorted images. So if you're using eBay Picture Services, stick with their 400x400 guideline; if you're using a different picture host, then you can use a larger picture size.

Resizing Your Files

You should also reduce the amount of detail in your picture to keep the file size smallno more than 50KB for each picture. This keeps the loading time for each photo down to a reasonable level.

There are three ways to reduce the size of an image file. You can reduce the dots per inch (dpi); you can resize the width and height; or you can reduce the number of colors used. Depending on your pictures, you may need to use some or all of these techniques to get the file down to a workable size. Most image editing software lets you perform all three of these operations.

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.