One of my favorite design blogs posted an article about the best online tools for photo editing. I thought this might be useful for some of you. I know I’ve said this before, but I still firmly believe that your product photos can make or break your website – so please spend some time on them and make them look their absolute best!

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/tools/online-photo-editing/

Hi all! Yes, I’m on vacation but I need to talk to everyone today about sending out e-mail blasts using their website admin console. This primarly affects osCommerce Creloaded sites that are using the Newsletter Manager tool. We are asking that you consider moving your  mailing list to a third-party like Constant Contact or YMLP. 

The problem with using the Newsletter Manager to send e-mails to all your customers is it usually results in a lot of  e-mails being returned to us due to bad e-mail addresses, spam blockers, etc. Many of you have been in business for several years, so a lot of your customer accounts are old/outdated and contain e-mail addresses that are no longer valid. This gets us in to a lot of trouble!

We’ve really had to start monitoring this because our server keeps getting blacklisted by ISPs, especially Yahoo and Comcast.  When this happens, they start to reject all e-mail from all sites on our server – not just the person who sent out the e-mail blast. So please take a moment and look at a third-party service for e-mail marketing. They are not very expensive and it really is a more effective method for reaching your customers.

Another point to keep in mind is that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires the each message include a means to “opt out” (i.e., decline future e-mail from the same source). The Newsletter Manager does not offer this option – we don’t want anyone getting in trouble for breaking anit-spam legislation!

If you have any questions, please let me know – I will be glad to talk you through this. And please don’t think I’m singling anyone out. We had several people do e-mail blasts over the weekend, resulting in over 800 bounced e-mail. Thank you for your cooperation.

A..

Please join me in welcoming our first guest blogger, Shanna of Sitesquared.

OK, OK… maybe not the actual picture is worth $1,000. But, if a great picture helps you sell $1,000 in products, I would say it’s worth a lot. Pictures will make or break your website. Especially an ecommerce website. Just as if you were in a brick and mortar store, the presentation is key. Even more so on a website. The product picture is what will sell your product. I HIGHLY recommend having a professional take your pictures. Especially for high end items. You may even find an aspiring photographer at one of the local colleges or high schools to take some pictures for a decent price. (Yes, even the high schools have photography classes. I started taking classes in 10th grade… and we won’t mention how LONG ago that was.) However, if this is not an option, you can try these tips.

While I could go on forever, I have decided to treat this as a series. Today, I am going to run through a quick tutorial on how to take clothing pictures… with a little bonus ‘intro to Picnik‘. And, in the weeks to come, I will touch on how to snap some great shots of other kinds of products.

First, let me note, I do have a very nice DSLR camera, but all pictures for this tutorial were shot in the automatic mode. So, you can use your point and shoot camera and get the same results. So let’s begin already!

Step #1 – The Supplies

Make your way down to the local craft and hobby store and pick up a big piece of foam board (the kind used for school projects) and a couple of yards of felt. I used white felt today… however, you can use whatever color strikes your fancy… think about your website and what colors might look good with it. You should be able to walk out of the store spending no more than $10. Nifty, eh?

Step #2 – Iron Your Felt

Yes, I said that taboo word IRON!! I know, I don’t like to iron either. But the felt usually has a few fold lines from the craft store, and we need to take those out of the picture. (hehe)

Speaking of, let’s talk about felt for a minute. Why on earth am I suggesting you use felt? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The main reason is because the material in non reflective, so we won’t see any glare in our pictures. The secondary reason, the clothing will stick to the felt quite easily, so you can try out some neat arrangements with your clothing.

Step #3 – Pick Your Room and Your Lighting

You should pick a room with lots of windows. We want as much natural light pouring in as possible. The room I am using today has 5 large windows and it was a beautiful SUNNY day. So I had a lot of light in the room. I set up so that the product would be facing the windows. Start with a chair, and lean the piece of foam board against the back of the chair. I also used a piece of tape on the seat of the chair and the bottom of the foam board, so the foam board would stay put.

Next, we will drape the felt over the foam board. Today I am shooting kids clothing. If you need to shoot adult clothing, you may need something bigger than the foam board, and a couple more yards of felt.

Step #4 – Taking pictures!

So, it’s time to snap some pics. Position your clothing on the felt. Make sure that you iron the clothing if it has packaging creases from the manufacturer. We don’t want to see those fold marks. (Hey your iron is already out anyway… so you may as well keep going… and then you can come to my house and start on my… hehe) Try out some different arrangements. If you have several pairs of pants to sell, arrange some a different way to create a variety of pictures. When you are taking pictures, zoom right in on the item. This saves time when it comes to cropping.

Step #5 – Make Those Photos POP!

So now you have some decent photos! No half painted toenails in the corner of your picture… no carpet stains next to that shirt… and no clutter in the background. But, we are not done yet. Now we head on over to Picnik and punch up our pics a bit.. make them rock!

First, let’s brighten them up a hair.. use the Exposure tool. Don’t go overboard… we don’t want the color to get out of whack.

Next, let’s crop this picture. You won’t always need to crop, but in this case, I had a lot of extra whitespace.

OK.. almost done! Next, let’s add a border. This is not absolutely necessary.. however, if you are using white felt, I recommend it, simply b/c it will make the picture stand out a bit more… and as in this case, if the background is not pure white, it will be much less obvious. So head over to the Create tab and let’s add a border.

Lastly… let’s SAVE… yes, Picnik is amazing. They let you save your edited pictures on your hard drive. Woohoo!! So save away… and now you are ready to upload some kick butt product pics!

Next time, we’ll talk about taking model shots! Check back soon.

Are you trying to figure out what domain name to register for your online boutique? Is the one you want already taken? I came across this article the other day and thought it made some very good points. Click here to read.

Also be sure to checkout the site Nameboy. You can plug in different combinations of words that you like, and Namboy will come up with suggestions and tell you what’s available and what isn’t. A handly little tool!