How To Improve Your Etsy Photography

As a newbie to the Etsy community, I've spent some time trying to get to know it better lately. One thing that I've noticed a lot of people are struggling with is product photography, especially photo editing. There are a lot of photos on Etsy that with just a few tweaks here and there could be dramatically improved, and I wanted to share a few helpful hints on how to do it. I've put together a brief tutorial here using a free photo editing service Picnik with some simple tips that I hope will help out beginners.

Before and After Examples

First a few tips in general. Choose a bright, light and simple background that will help your product stand out. Try to choose a background for your product that compliments it's coloring and your brand identity, if in doubt a simple piece of quality white paper from the craft store with a subtle texture usually always works. If your background is heavily patterned or distracting, it may actually take away from your item.

Also, for smaller items like jewelry, try using the macro setting on your camera. Most digital cameras, even point and shoots, should have this setting. Look for a symbol of a flower and turn it on. This setting will focus in on the foreground of your product and will throw the background out of focus. This adds a subtle and professional look to your photos. When using the macro setting keep in mind that even subtle movements can create too blurred of a photo, try steadying your camera by placing it on a small book.

Place your product near a window that receives lots of natural light or shoot outside. Try to shoot in the morning when the light is it's softest so that you don't get harsh shadows. Try not to use the flash on your camera. It can add really harsh shadows and unnatural looking lighting to your photography. Use your camera's handbook to figure out how to change your white balance settings to "Daylight", but experiment with the "Auto" setting to see if there's a discernible difference.

Try several different angles and don't be afraid to throw in subtle props to add interest to your photos. Sometimes I will hang jewelry off of simple, white, porcelain dishes that I have around the house. The props should be in keeping with your brand and shouldn't be the focus of the photo. Try cropping in on your product. If it's a necklace, try showing a close-up of just the clasp for example.

Now that we've covered the basics, upload your photo and go to Picnik. I'm using a photo that I took a little while ago as an example for this tutorial. This was taken on a piece of paper on my dining room table near a large window. Only natural lighting was used.

 

Our starting point.

 
This photo looks okay, but it is overall very dark looking. It is also kind of off in color. I'm going to show you how to brighten it up evenly and correct the color temperature.

Step One: Upload your photo to Picnik and click on the "Exposure" button in the top menu.

Step Two: In the Exposure menu click on the Advanced tab. In this example I've bumped the highlights and shadows exposure up to 32 each and I've increased the contrast to 10 to bring back some of the definition in the photo. Every photo will be different, you'll have to adjust these settings until it looks right to you. When you're done, select OK to return back to the main menu.

 

 

Step Three: Now that our photo is looking much brighter and more natural, we'll want to correct the overall temperature of this photo. To me, this photo has a slight greenish cast that I'll want to get rid of to accurately display the silvers and blues in the product.

Choose "Colors" from the top menu and bump the Temperature slider down to make the overall temperature of the photo more cool or up to make it more warm. I only had to bump the temperature of this photo down -1 for it to look right to me. Sometimes just a slight adjustment is all you need.

And volia. We now have a much more professional looking photo that is nice and bright and draws your attention straight to the product. My goal was to provide some basic tips to help improve the photos of those people who are just starting out with product photography. I hope to do some more advanced tutorials in the future, so please let me know what you would like to learn more about in the future.

The improved photo. Ready for posting!

Let me know if you have any questions,
Talk to you soon!
Ashley