5 Tips To Create Better Images To Increase Sales online - Depop / Amazon / Etsy / Vinted / Ebay

In order to maximise sales of your products online it is critical to have clear and concise product imagery. No matter how good your product may be, it is a simple fact that an unclear image will turn off the majority of potential buyers. You have a matter of milliseconds to grab a clients attention and to do this your product image needs to be on point. Ideally, you can appoint a professional photographer to undertake this for you, however, should you need to upload multiple items daily (like for Depop or Vinted) or you simply do not have the budget to afford a professional photographer then please see below my main tips to help you get the best out of your DIY imagery.

1) Use a Quality Camera - this is an obvious one to start with, however, without a decent camera you wont be able to get very far. Now you don't need to spend a fortune on the best camera on the market but it needs to be of a sufficient quality to grab a clear image. (I personally use an iPhone X for ease and I get the quality that I need ) However, if you reallly want to up your game and are interested in purchasing a really good camera I've linked some of my favourite products below.

2) Good Lighting - This is essential to make sure the quality and colours of your image are looking good. You cannot beat natural light, so if you have the facilities to take your photos outdoors, aim for a clear day (not too bright) and nature will do the rest for you. If that isn't possible the next best option is to find a room that gets as much as possible. Aim to place your product with a window to the bottom of the product and this will help with a clear image. To go a step further you can pick up a lighting soft box fairly cheaply on Amazon, try to place this at 45 degree from your product. This alongside the natural light to the rear of the product should give really solid lighting to allow some great imagery. Below is the set up that I have. There is a window at the rear of the photo letting natural light in and I have the lighting soft box to add to this. I'd like this to be further around to the side, however, due to the constraints of the size of the room that's as far as I can get it.

3) Clear Background - Your next step is to get a clear, bright background. This will help with the colour and contrast of your image. For this you can use a multitude of things, from a sheet of white paper to a screen for a projector (like I use - Which is also part of quite a cool outdoor cinema that I set up when weather permits!!!)

4) Style your Product - Now your set up to take your photos, you need to decide how best you want to style your products. Depending on your product there are various ways to do this, and the best advise I can give on this, is to research into similar products and see how these are styled. If I use clothing as an example, I tend to use two methods. I either lay out flat and precise or I bring the item to life a little using the magic of tissue paper! It is possible to fill the arms, chest and bottom of clothing to create a worn effect to give it more of a relaxed appearance and allow the potential purchaser to imagine how it looks on. I think this creates a more appealing image, however, this does take him, so if you are uploading items in bulk it probably isn't worth the time involved. Once your product is styled as required. It's time to snap away! Take your image from directly above the product, careful not to leave shadows. (Correct lighting as above should stop this!) Take your time and get an image you are happy with it. Once you have your image it's time for it's final touches!

5) Editing Software - If you have followed all of the above steps, this shouldn't be a requirement, however, it can improve your imagery 10x by using a good software and should not take too long to do so. I personally use a software called Pixelmator Pro. It's a very powerful image editing package which is reasonable priced (I think it was £38.99) You could also use Adobe Photoshop if you are more familiar with this and there are various others on the market at the moment. The editing process that I use is fairly straight forward. I simply, cut and replace the background with a clearer white. This is done by highlighting the image with the section erase function, inverting it so it highlights everything but the product, deleting this and replacing with a white box. Very simple but extremely effective! You can also edit any colours on your image very simply, I try not to do this too much as I want the image to reflect the actual product, however, sometimes you may need to have a very slightly tweak the image so that it looks actually like the product you are photographing.

A few examples of the images that I have produced are below.

I hope this has been helpful and happy snapping!