Images Are An Important Part of Your eBay Selling Strategy

If you have your own photo-editing software installed and you're quite comfortable using it and you're happy with the results, by all means, continue doing what you're doing. And if you've got Photoshop installed, you're one step ahead as it's the ultimate program in photo-manipulation. Photoshop is the expert's tool of choice for photo editing. But putting a program like this to effective use usually requires some training as there's a definite learning curve involved. With adequate training and practice, you can create masterpieces of stunning beauty.

But to make money as an eBay Seller, you really don't need to be a professional photographer and you don't need Photoshop to deliver images that get the job done. Irfanview enables you to enhance your images in no time at all and it won't cost you a thing. It's freeware so you never have to worry about paying a fee for its use.

What I love about Irfanview is that it's so easy to use. I usually make 3 basic adjustments to my images and then they're good to go. Those 3 steps are cropping, adjusting the brightness and contrast, and resizing the image.

Just launch the program and then open one image at a time. Make your adjustments and then name the file so you can find it easily later when you go to write your listing.

As you open an image, the first thing you'll notice is that it's much larger than it needs to be. Simply change the view by zooming out. To do this, click the magnifying glass icon with the minus symbol inside. If you look at the toolbar across the top of the window, you'll see two magnifying glasses a plus for zooming in and a minus for zooming out. Click the one on the right a number of times in succession to zoom out until your view of the image is at a comfortable and workable size. You haven't done anything to the image itself at this point. All you've done is adjust what you see on the screen.

The next step is to crop the image. That's where you simply frame the item itself and cut away the excess. It's where you take your imaginary scissors and cut around the item and discard the rest. It cleans up the image and makes your item the star of the show. You don't need the extra background anyway. Cropping your pictures this way is like trimming tops and peeling fresh carrots. You cut off the waste so that all you're left with is usable goods.

Next, proceed to the Image Menu, and then scroll down the list to Enhance Colors. Here you're presented with a simple, sliding scale adjustment for both the brightness and contrast.

I usually increase both to varying degrees. Just slide the arrow along the bar and watch the changes made to the image above on the right. This is the modified version while the one on the left is the original. When you've got your image looking the way you want, click OK.

The final steps are to resize your image, name it, and save it to your eBay file.

Go to the Image Menu again. This time you're looking for the Resize/Resample tab. Click on it and you'll see the current size of your image. The one I'm working on now shows a width of 2592 pixels and a Height of 1944 pixels. This is way too big for my purposes on eBay. The largest dimension shouldn't be any more than 600 - 700 pixels, so I simply adjust the width of my image accordingly.

When I change it to 600 pixels, it automatically adjusts the Height in perfect proportion. So my image is now 600 pixels wide and 450 pixels high. The feature that allowed me to preserve the original image proportions is the Preserve Aspect Ratio button in the Resize/Resample window. My image is now the ideal size for eBay. All I have to do at this point is proceed to the File Menu, scroll down to Save As and enter a name, and then click the Save button. That's all there is to it.

It's best to save your images as jpeg files as it works well whether you use eBay's Picture Services or host the images on your own web space

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