Search results (tags) for: "photoshop"

How-To: Brighten Your Photos with Paperama

2008-11-14T14:16:00Z

I love to see Etsy sellers sharing their skills! I caught a great Flickr photo tutorial by Etsy seller Paperama and I thought I would share her wisdom with you! Inspired by other Flickr members commenting on her beautiful photos, Paperama, responded with a handy photo-tutorial. Paperama uses Picnik, a web-based photo editing program that is very user-friendly. If you have a Flickr account you can access all your Flickr photos via Picnik, which can be convenient! If you don't use Flickr, no worries; you can upload pics from your computer very easily. Follow this tutorial to find out how to make your photos bright and professional!

Step 1

→ Go to www.picnik.com
It's a super cool free web-based photo editing service - you don't even have to register!

→ Click on "Upload a photo" and choose the file you want to edit.

Step 2

After your upload is complete it should look like this.

→ Click on Exposure

Step 3

On the top several options appear - you can just play around a bit with exposure and contrast, to see how it works. If you don't like, it just click on Reset.

If you drag the exposure to right, you'll see that the complete image is getting brighter. Dragging contrast to the right, makes your lights and darks more intense.

→ Click on the Advanced Button to open additional options.

Step 4

If you want to brighten up the background/light colors drag the highlights bar to the right.
In the Histogram box you can see how the curves change. You can also drag the shadows bar to edit the darker parts of your image.

Step 5

Use the Zoom funtion on the right bottom corner to see how the image looks close up.

→ Click OK if you're happy with the results.

Step 6

→ Click on Save & Share in the top navigation.

Here you can choose a name for your new image file and edit dimensions, as well as the file format and compression quality.

→ Click on Save Photo to download the edited image to your computer.

Thanks for sharing Paperama! What a gem you are!

Need more help with photos? Check out the Photography section of the Seller Handbook.

Staying Sharp: Achieving Clarity and Crispness in Your Photos

2008-02-07T19:09:00Z

When you sell your craft online, photos are vitally important to your success. Without a physical item to touch and look at, your customers rely on your pictures as their tactile experience. Nothing will turn away a customer faster than a blurry photo with inscrutable details. Luckily, there are many solutions to this common frustration that can help you achieve a sharp, crisp, and alluring photo.

Set-up Solutions

Lighting: Good lighting is essential, because without it, your camera can’t capture the fine details and different tones and values of your item. A good source of light can be as simple as a bright windowsill. Direct sunlight, however, can wash out and overexpose your photo, so take care to either shoot on overcast days or diffuse the light with a sheer curtain or a piece of tracing paper taped to the window. Achieving good light levels indoors is trickier, but can be done inexpensively with a DIY lightbox and a pair of high-wattage full-spectrum industrial or shop lamps. When shooting indoors, be sure to have at least two sources of light, one on each side of the item, to avoid harsh shadows. Take advantage of your camera’s exposure values scale and white balance as well (see Bright Light, Big Color: Using EV and White Balance to Make Your Photos True to Life).

Tripod: Snapping a sharp photo requires a steady hand. The slightest movement of your hands or body, even the simple act of depressing the shutter, can result in “camera shake” – the blurring of an image that occurs when the lens is moved while the shutter is open. A tripod solves this problem by providing a stable base for your camera. The camera is affixed to the head of the tripod, so your hands are off the camera until the shutter is depressed. Tripods come in all sizes, from floor models ideal for taking shots of large items such as clothing or art, to tiny table-top models that are great for jewelry and other small items. In a pinch, if you don’t have a tripod, a bag of rice or other bean-bag type surface placed on the table top or on a stack of books can provide a stable enough base for you to angle your camera and snap a sharper photo.

In-Camera Solutions

Macro Mode: Taking clear photos of very small objects, such as jewelry, can be difficult unless you utilize your camera’s macro function. Read through your camera’s manual to determine how to switch your camera into macro mode. The icon for macro mode usually looks like a small flower. By switching your camera into macro mode your camera will be able to focus on objects as close as 2cm away, depending on your camera model.

Left: Photo taken with default camera settings. Right: Photo taken in macro mode.

Focusing: Most contemporary digital cameras have a two-step focus function that enables the user to select precisely what part of the item they want in focus. Try depressing the shutter button of your camera only halfway down, and watch for one or more rectangles to appear on the camera’s screen. The part of the image within the rectangle will be in focus. Once you see this rectangle, fully depress the shutter button. Generally this rectangle will appear in the centre of the screen, but if you want the focus of your image off-center, simply move your camera to the left or right while keeping the shutter button half-depressed, then press down all the way when the image is arranged as you wish. You may need to practice this technique several times before achieving a consistent result.

Remote Shutter Release/Timer: If camera shake is your main enemy, you might consider purchasing a remote shutter release for your camera. This is simply a button on a cord that when plugged into your camera, allows you to depress the shutter without touching the camera at all, completely eliminating camera shake. You can also achieve a similar result by utilizing the timer on your camera.

Depth of Field: Ever see those artsy photos that are sharp in one part of the image, and blurry everywhere else? You can create that effect by utilizing depth-of-field. Depth-of-field refers to how much of the area in front of or behind the subject of the image is in focus. A “shallow” DOF means that very little of the image is in focus – perhaps only the item itself, or even just a small part of the item. A “deep” DOF means that most of, if not all the image is in focus, including the foreground, subject, and background. DOF can be complicated to understand, but essentially it is composed of a geometric sequence called “f-stops," which describe focal length divided by the aperture diameter.

Left: Photo taken using f-stop f/8, resulting in a deep depth-of-field (in focus from back to front). Right: Photo taken using f-stop f/2.8, resulting in a shallow depth-of-field (in focus up close, blurry far away).

The smaller the f-stop (i.e. f/2.8), the shallower the DOF. The higher the f-stop (i.e. f/16), the deeper the DOF. If you have a manually operated digital camera or a camera with an “Aperture Priority” mode, you can take advantage of DOF to create some great photographs. To get that sharp-in-front-blurry-in-the-back effect, switch to Aperture Priority and set your f-stop as low as it can go. In most cameras without an add-on macro lens, f/2.8 is the lowest possible setting. Focus the camera carefully on one part of the item by depressing the shutter halfway as described previously, then snap your photo. Again, this can take some practice but the effects are worthwhile.

Post-Processing Solutions

Photoshop: Levels: Using the Levels function in Photoshop can help to bring out the details in too-dark or too-light photographs (for tips on how to use Levels, see this article).

Photoshop - Unsharp Mask: Although the name seems counter-intuitive, the unsharp mask function in Photoshop is the quickest and easiest way to sharpen your photos during post-processing. Unsharp mask uses a combination of sharpening and blurring edges to increase contrast, whereas the sharpen function only sharpens, which can lead to unwanted edge pixelation. There are three controls that make up unsharp mask: amount, radius, and threshold. The amount slider controls how much contrast is enhanced. It can generally be left between 100-150%. The radius is the most important slider, as it designates how far to look for anything that might be considered an edge.

Left: Photo before using Unsharp Mask. Right: Photo after using Unsharp Mask.

This means that a low resolution image should have a lower radius setting than a higher resolution image. A good rule of thumb is to take the photo resolution and divide by 200. Set the radius at the resulting number. For example, if resolution is 180dpi, set the radius to 0.9. Threshold basically withholds the results of the other two sliders, so it can usually be left at 0, unless you have unwanted grain in the photo that needs smoothing. Be cautious to not over-sharpen your image, or it will look pixelated – good sharpening is subtle and enhances the photo without overpowering it.

Final Tip: Practice, practice, practice! One of the great advantages of digital photography is that you can take endless numbers of photographs with no waste, so don’t hesitate to take the time to figure out which of these techniques can work for you.

Happy snapping!

For more photography how-tos, go here! Also, terrain is an experienced photographer and has shared her expertise with the Storque before, so for more of her how-tos, go here!

How-to: Photoshop Techniques for Mature Listings

2007-12-21T12:09:00Z

People on Etsy come from many different walks of life: we're an international, multi-cultural marketplace. On a website of Etsy's scale, certain words and images need to be concealed. These policies are about keeping this community healthy — and growing. Reaching a diverse audience is essential to the success of our marketplace. You can view our policy regarding mature items in the Etsy DOs and DON'Ts.

After January 1, 2008, we will be working extra hard to enforce this policy and here are some tips for making your shop appropriate for all audiences! We will still rely on our community to help bring listings to our attention, so we welcome you to flag listings you feel are too risque for Etsy and we will be sure to investigate. For Etsy admin, we want to inform sellers (and all members of the community) about our policy.

Spidercamp, one Etsy seller known for her rude little bunny plushies, described how she felt the door to communication with Customer Support admin was open. For her, "it's the difference between Etsy telling me I'm not ever allowed to swear, and Etsy asking me nicely not to swear so much in strangers' faces. It's a fair request. I haven't changed the things I make, and my sales of these items have not suffered in the least."

Here are some tips to help you adjust your images, the instructions are for Adobe Photoshop, but other image editing programs like GIMP (gimp.org) and Picasa (picasa.google.com) are free and have similar tools. Remember to save your files as JPEGs in RGB mode or they won't upload to your listings properly!

Cropping:
A simple option is to crop the image so only an "all ages" snippet of your photo is visible for the first thumbnail. For example, if you use vintage ephemera with nudes to create a collage, crop the image so you have a "zoomed in" image of one of the faces or another lovely detail. Then, in the following images in the listing, go ahead and show the whole she-bang.

To create the cropped image in Photoshop, you can use the marquee tool to select a portion of the photo...a portion with no naughty bits. Hold down the shift key if you want to keep the selection a perfect square and press the spacebar to move the marquee around on the image. Once you've chosen the area, copy the area inside the marquee (you can use the keyboard command Apple + C on a Mac, Ctrl + C on a PC) and open a new document to paste the selection into it. Save this image and you can use it as the first image on your listing, then upload the complete photo for one of the other images in your listing.

Using Mosie as our nude model (mvegan5's XXX kitty), the first image show's just the pretty kitty face, appropriate for the main photo of the listing:

Then the full image of your artful nude can be shown in one of the following images:

Overlaying and Blacking Out:
Another option is to use the standard black square. In Photoshop, use the rectangle tool to make a shape (again shift will keep the shape a square), but you will have to wait until you create the shape to move it around. To adjust the size of the box once you have made it, go to Free Transform under the Edit tab. You can also make other shapes with the marquee tool and use the paintbucket option to dump a color into the shape.

Place the shape over the mature regions and save it to upload as the first image in the listing. Then use the original image as your second image in the listing. If you're feeling extra frisky, you can use a "PG" image to cover up the mature parts.

In this one, I used a picture of my kitty Stella; you may want to use your avatar or something humorous instead of just a black box. This "shameless" kitty belongs to megrnc and we originally found the photo on the Etsy Pets flickr group.

Filters:
For those of you with some knowledge of Photoshop and filters, you can try this method. Select the "questionable" area of your image using the marquee tool and copy and paste the selection into a new layer. Working on this layer, you can use a filter on just the selection to distort it. I used the Mosaic filter (under the Pixilate filters) to add a blurred bar over this naked puppy's private parts, but many other filters can be tested out to find one that looks good with your image. This method is fun because it give that professional too-hot-for-tv look. We found curlygirlglass' sassy puppy on the Etsy Pets flickr group, too.

Text:
You can also write the word MATURE or other text over the area you'd like to conceal. Smuttons, an Etsy seller who makes buttons from saucy vintage imagery, remarked that using text as a graphic design element in this process actually helped her sales! "When I made these red banners over the naughty parts and wrote SMUT on them, it kinda stuck out. I got this convo from this buyer who wanted to get one of my buttons, but she even requested that [the SMUT be left] on it!"

Other Methods:
There are other lo-fi methods, too. For Spidercamp, whose plushies have bad words embroidered on their tummies, she just blocks out the portion of her item with her hand. "My approach to 'mature-izing' my listings is pretty simple and crude...So far I've just been blocking part of the filthy language with my finger in that first photo."

If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to post in the comments or send me a convo. I'll be glad to help with any Photoshop questions as best I can, and thanks to our beautiful models and their owners!

On The Level: Make Your Photos Pop with Histograms and Levels

2007-11-12T03:30:00Z

If your lightbox is letting you down and you can’t find a sunny window to save your life, you might find yourself in dire need of some digital post-processing to help out your photos. Fortunately, the “Levels” tool found in most photo editing programs can whip virtually any photo into shape with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Using the Basic Functions of the Levels Tool:

In Photoshop, Levels is found under Image>Adjustments. In the Levels function, you will see three arrows below the histogram of your images. The arrow on the far left controls the darkest third of the image’s pixels, or “shadows”, the middle arrow controls the grey tones, or “midtones”, and the arrow on the far right controls the brightest third, or the “highlights”.

1. To adjust your histogram, first evaluate the distribution of the pixels to determine whether your image is currently low-key, high-key, low-contrast or high-contrast, versus what you want it to be (see description below).

2. Simply click on the arrows and slide them back and forth to adjust the tonal range. If you have a low-key or high-key image, use the opposite arrow to adjust the image i.e. if your image is high-key, move the shadows arrow to the right, if your image is low-key, move the highlights arrow to the left. Use the midtones arrow and move it left or right accordingly until your photo has improved to your satisfaction.

3. If your image is low-contrast, slide both the shadow and highlight arrows in towards the middle to create more contrast. High-contrast images are not so easy to repair. The distribution of pixels in a high-contrast image means that there are fewer grey tones that can be manipulated. A high-contrast image can be darkened or lightened overall, but not evenly redistributed. A very high-contrast photo may need to be re-taken.

4. Click ‘OK’ to save your changes. Then go back into Levels and have another look at your new histogram. The pixels should be more evenly redistributed in a centered, bell-shaped curve. You can continue to adjust the image using the arrows until your desired effect is achieved.

Tip: When an image’s pixels are redistributed over a wider tonal range, some tonal values wind up empty. This is called “combing”, and appears as a finely striped histogram, with the blank or empty vertical stripes representing the tonal value that is missing. Repeated use of Levels can lead to heavy combing and appear as banding or “posterization” in the photograph. Always use Levels judiciously and try to make all adjustments in one turn to avoid combing.

What are Levels and Histograms and How can They Help?

The “Levels” function is a tool used by digital editing software to manipulate the tonal values or brightness levels of an image. The standard 8-bit digital image contains 256 colours which are mapped as discrete black, grey, or white tones on a histogram, with 0 = black, 255 = white, and 254 shades of grey in between. When you take a photograph, the pixels of an image are sorted into one of these 256 tonal values, and stacked to make a vertical bar. When the bars are lined up together in numerical order of tonal value on a graph with 0 (black) on the far left, and 255 (white) on the far right, they create a curve on the graph. This curve (or curves in some cases), is the image’s histogram.

Some digital cameras have a function that allows you to view an image’s histogram directly on the camera screen. Even if your camera doesn’t have this function, a program such as Adobe Photoshop will be able to produce your image’s histogram in the Levels function. By examining the shape and placement of the histogram’s curve, you can determine whether your image is properly exposed or not, and manipulate the tonal values to achieve a better image.

A perfectly exposed, evenly toned image will display as a bell-shape centered in the middle of the histogram, with the bulk of the image’s pixels (top of the curve) lying in the midtones or grey tonal value range. The ends of the curve will meet precisely at 0 and 255, because a properly exposed, evenly weighted image will have fewer perfect black or perfect white pixels than mid-tones. However, very few photos will display a perfect curve. See here:

Depending on where the peak or peaks of the histogram fall, you may have a high-key, low-key, low-contrast, or high-contrast image:

High-Key: In a high-key image, the bulk of the histogram’s curve will fall on the right side of the graph, indicating the majority of the tonal values lean towards 255, or perfect white. This may indicate an over-exposed photograph that appears pale or having glare. See here:

Low-Key: In a low-key image, the bulk of the histogram’s curve will fall on the left side of the graph, indicating the majority of the tonal values lean towards 0, or perfect black. This may indicate an under-exposed photograph that appears dark or muddied. See here:

Low-Contrast: In a low-contrast image, the histogram’s curve will be tight and narrow and bunched in towards the centre of the graph. The ends of the curve will not meet 0 and 255. This indicates a photograph with not enough contrast that may appear washed out, flat or dull.

High-Contrast: In a very high-contrast image, the histogram’s curve may be inverted, with a peak at either end of the graph that dips in the centre. This indicates the majority of the pixels in the image are either very dark or very bright and results in a photograph that is very high-contrast with few midtones. See here:

The types of histograms described above are not necessarily “bad” histograms. There times when it is desirable to have an unbalanced tonal range — for example, a scene of a snowy day would realistically be a high-key image.

Whereas a night scene would automatically create a low-key value range.

A soft and romantic image might need to be low-contrast, while high-contrast would enhance a bold and exciting image. The “Levels” function comes into play when you do need to adjust the distribution of tonal values across your image.

Hot Tip: Resizing your photos the easy way!

2007-09-14T12:21:00Z

Ever wondered how some sellers always seem to have their images perfectly sized and cropped to make the perfect looking thumbnail? You want the secret? Well, search no further and check out this great little video tutorial I found on YouTube all about how to resize your photos! Watch it by clicking the play button below!

Resizing your photos can also be useful for emailing your photos and uploading them all over the web. Keep in mind, to get that perfect looking thumbnail in your Etsy shop, crop your photo into a perfect square just the way you like it...that way, your image will show up just as you planned!

Hot Tip of the Day: Photoshop and Gimp 101

2007-08-27T20:00:00Z

Have you been hearing a lot about Photoshop lately and all the wonderful things everyone says it can do to better your photos? Are you curious?

Do you have Photoshop and feel lost with how to use it or just need a little refresher course?

Well, you are in luck, because I found this great 50 minute tutorial all about using Photoshop for beginners!! Just click the play button to watch it right here:

Your product photographs on Etsy are essential to your success, because the photos are the only way your customers will be able to see what they are potentially buying. They cannot see it in person or pick it up and touch it. Using Photoshop or other photo editing software programs is such a great way to really make your photos on Etsy stand out from the crowd and get those initial clicks that just might lead to your next sales.

There are actually a ton of great Photoshop tutorials on Youtube that you can watch and learn from absolutely for free! Just search for the issue you need help with and several different videos should come right up! Here's a wealth of information for the beginner in Photoshop right here!

If you do not already have Photoshop and are looking for a free but similar photo editing alternative, check out GIMP. It is often used as a free software replacement for Photoshop and can be downloaded for free right here. You can find similar Youtube tutorials for GIMP on Youtube just like these.

And for a simple GIMP tutorial on how to make a banner, press the play button and look no further:

Happy learning and can't wait to see all of your awesome new photos and banners!!

NOTE: This was originally posted on the Etsy Labs' blog. Check out more Tips of the Day!