Fixing eBay images to comply with new policies

eBay has changed their policies - it must be a headache for some retailers since all their images need to be redone. According to the new policies, images have to be:

• Borders, text and logos are are no longer permitted 
• Watermarks must be small, text only with an opacity of less than 50%, not obscuring the item. 
• Images must be at least 500 pixels on the longest side but eBay recommends 1600 pixels for the best possible display on all pages and devices. 
• Ebay also strongly recommends that the item fills 80-90% of the frame and is placed on a plain background.

Instead of flaffing around with Paint, I suggest doing the following... may I present you with a brief tutorial on how to fix your images, complete free. I suggest using a basic programme called pixlr. It is online based, so no installation required: http://pixlr.com/editor/. Now select 'open image from computer' and do the usual uploading... I have randomly picked a picture from an eBay listing to show you...

1. First, have a high resolution image. 

I am sorry if your previous photos have low resolution, but a low pixel picture cannot turn into highly pixel one . So you just have to do it again. As people cannot touch or feel the product they would love to have as much pictorial details as possible. So do not be lazy on this one! And to make things easier, make sure your background is plain. The plainer the easier your job would be. 

2. Crop the image.

Crop out the unwanted part. For this one you dont want the flag and the words. Tab 'c' on your keyboard and hold down your left mouse button and make a rectangle around the area you want.

3. Remove the background. 

Now tab 'w' on your keyboard and you are on magic wand. It selects things for you as a patch (it auto detects the edge of the colour patch). Can you see 'Tolerance' on the top left? The higher the tolerance the less sensitive it is to color difference, hence the larger the patch it will select. So I usually work on something between 20-30 to start with... you have to try it yourself to see how much you want to select. If you think after selecting there are still a lot of black left then you may want to increase tolerance. Vice Versa if you think it is selecting too much. 

now click on the black background, and press 'delete' on your keyboard. Do it on the other part of the black background until you have get rid of them all.

Now we need to tidy up the left over black. Use the eraser (tab 'e' on keyboard). Hold down the mouse button to keep erasing. On the top left you can select the size of the brush. There are hard and soft brushes. Use the hard one for this circumstances (you want hard edges). Erase the rest of the colour. 

Remember to zoom in and look at the edges so you erase them properly. Tab 'z' to zoom. On your right there would be the 'navigation' box which you can zoom in and out. Alternatively, the scroller on your mouse would do the trick too. 

If anything goes wrong, hold down 'Ctrl + z' to go back a step. 

To clean up the edges, try the lazzo tool (tab 'l'). Again on the top left you can select freehand or straight lines. I suggest straight lines since it is rather difficult to control the freehand one. Now you can choose the white part by 'lasso-ing' around them, and press delete. Click the mouse button when you want to anchor the end of the line. Doing this bits by bits would be easier. Again zoom in to get precision. 

4. Remove watermark

This is the most difficult part. You just need a lot of patience. Basically you are painting over the watermark with the brush (tab 'b'). Select a proper size brush first, then hold down 'Ctrl' and click on the colour you want to use. For example if I want to clear the watermark on the light grey patch there, hold down Ctrl and click on the light grey right next to the watermark. Now you have selected the color. Paint onto the watermark to cover it. 

Remember to keep updating the colour of your brush when you move around the picture. Even if the colour looks the same to you it can be slightly different.

5. Adjustment

On the top of the page, you can click on the adjustment tab and there are a lot of things to play around with. Such as lightness (make pictures brighter/ darker), contrast, hue/saturation (adjust colour) etc. Give them a try and maybe your picture will look even better!

This is very basic editing and of course things can be easier if you have Photoshop. At the end of the day this is free and the more you work on it the better you would be on this - and the faster you would get it done. I personally think this is better than Paint so just give it a go :)

Hope this helps.