Being a seller is tough, especially when you're lacking the tools to promote your products. Luckily, there are image enhancing software like Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw, which are both great in adding panache to any item's value. Photoshop is quite easy to use, actually; it will also surely become handy in the long run if you prefer to edit item images yourself. What's more important is that it is hundredfold more superior compared to the pre-installed image editing program you're currently using.
Here are some basic Photoshop tips to get you started:
1. Use Photoshop only to enhance or adjust the brightness and color levels of images. As a seller, you should not alter the image to a point where you hide any physical defects. You can be sued for shipping an item that is not "as-is" with its ostensible image on your website.
2. One good use of Photoshop is its ability to add seamless watermarks to your images. By adding watermarks, people who redistribute your item photos will - in a sense - help you gain popularity, instead of stealing from you. You can create a watermark of your own on Photoshop, but remember to reduce its opacity to about 40-60%.
3. Use Photoshop to blur the item's background. If you don't own a DSLR, but want to emulate macro photography - where the focus is placed only on the subject, and not on the background - you can use Photoshop's quick mask tool to select a portion you want to edit (which will not obviously will not include the subject), then apply some Gaussian blur to the selected portion, making the background hazy, thereby giving your item the focus it needs.
4. Use Photoshop to scale images. Is your pre-installed photo editor not working wonders to scale your image in the exact dimensions you desire? You can solve this by opening your image in Photoshop, then going into 'Image', then 'Canvas Size'. While on the 'Canvas Size' window, change the 'inches' value to 'pixels' and set the image dimensions of your preference. Then, after the canvas is scaled, free transform the image [Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + T] to fit the image on the newly-scaled canvas. While on free transform mode, hold the Shift key to constrain the proportions of the images.
5. Image file size too big? Optimize it! Photoshop has the ability to compress a 1mb JPEG photo to just 200kb, but still retain its superior quality (and gives you the optional liberty to change its file format at the same time, either to .png, . gif, .bmp, and many others.). To do this, go to 'File', then 'Save for Web & Devices'; afterwards, select JPEG as the output format, reduce the quality to about 60% of the original, and you can see the drastic drop in the output file size. You can also change it to other file formats, but since you're surely optimizing real-life images, it's better to use the JPEG file extension, as it can supports more colors than other file formats.
Beyond these tips, there is a lot more to learn about Photoshop. Eventually, you'll fall in love with the software and even recommend it to friends. The sky is the limit when it comes to editing images using Photoshop.
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