Here are some Tips & Tricks related to photography and photos you post on your website, social media, Etsy shops, and more. This is my list of Top 7 things I do whenever I need to post photos.
When taking photos, use as much natural light as possible and make sure you do not have any shadows (from you leaning over, from other objects in the room, etc).
A lot of ecommerce sites use square images for the main image you see on a website and the thumbnails. If you take your phots in horizontal or vertical layout, make sure that your main subject in the photo will look great when automatically cropped into a square to create the thumbnail.
If you are using WordPress (WooCommerce) for your website, a nice image size is 750×750. Try to make all your photos the same size (or at least all square) so that when customers scroll through photos for a product, the screen isn’t jumping around. If you must have a photo that is a different size, I find it’s best when it is the last image.
Use real descriptive words to name your photo. If your phone or camera automatically names your photos (for example 2023-06-29-22.34.07 or IMG_0603) you will want to rename them before uploading to your website, shop, or social media. For instance AppleQuiltedMugRug if that is what the product is. When a screen reader is used, this will be read out loud to someone with a seeing impairment. When someone is searching Google for an apple mug rug or quilted mug rug, your photo could show up. If you have ever searched Google for a specific term and the clicked on the Images link to show all images for that item, what you see there is based on the NAME of the image. Items with generic dates and numbers won’t usually come up unless someone has added ALT text info on their website to describe the image.
In some way, shape or form, make sure your image is tagged with your name, your business name or your logo. I stopped putting it across my images because it detracts from people seeing the design, but it is advised to watermark your images in some way to prevent theft of your designs and hard work.
Be sure you find out the best sizes to use for each platform so that the image shows up nicely on that platform. Sizes do change from time to time. Keep an eye on how your images look when posted to social media, your website, or shop and adjust as needed.
Save your original images so you can re-use them in a variety of ways and crop them in the future for different use. Create folders on your computer that are labeled in a way that makes them easy to find.
😎 BACK UP YOUR FILES. Always, always, always, back up your files. I use OneDrive AND Dropbox AND Google Drive and have my files saved in three (3) places. Frequently used files I also have on my computer.
Need a Dropbox account? Get 500MB of free space on your account by signing up using my referral code. Refer other people and you can earn additional free space to store all of your files.
