How do others get such good fabric pics?

[Shane]

I need some help. I've been selling baby carriers for a while now. My website isn't generating much sales. I look at other people's websites and often wonder how did they get pictures of their fabric to look so good? Mine all look like I took pictures of my fabric at home (which I did) and I think it makes people not want to buy from me. It just doesn't have that professional feel/look.

[rubelin]

Use lots of light, get as close up as you can (use the super close focus setting on your camera), and crop it nicely using photo editing software. If you PM me your site, I'll look at the pics you have now and see if I have any ideas

[LianneM]

I have had success using a scanner and then cropping as the pp said. There was plenty of light and no glare that way. HTH

[Shane]

Ugh. I was trying to change the template on my website and completely deleted the whole thing. So I had to start over from scratch. I only had time to put a few things on there, and this time I thought I would put pictures of finished products instead. But I don't really know what I'm doing. It just doesn't look as good as some of the other carrier sites I've seen.

When I try to take pictures with a lot of light and with the flash, they don't seem to look true to color. When I do it without the flash I get a more accurate color, but with a shadow of me or the camera. I'll set up an album in snapfish and put a link on here for that.

In the meantime can you look at my site (www.babybearhugz.com) and give me some straight forward feedback? I've gotten a lot of compliments on the carrier, but I just haven't gotten a lot of orders. I just dropped my prices from $80.00 to $50.00. I wonder if that will make a difference? Please be honest with me. I can take it like a big girl.

[Shane]

Originally Posted by LianneM

I have had success using a scanner and then cropping as the pp said. There was plenty of light and no glare that way. HTH

Ok, I'll try that. But do you use any fabrics with big prints? For example I have this fabric that has huge dot/spots on it, the scanner wouldn't do it justice. I guess maybe that one will have to be the one off? The one that I take a camera shot of and do the best I can, ya know?


Thanks for your help, Mommas!

[kokonutmama]

I've also had a heck of a time getting fabric pics to look "right." The scanner does help in a lot of cases, sometimes I tell myself the funky lighting adds character. When all else fails, I ask the fabric supplier if it's ok to pull images off their website to put on my own. For prints this helped a ton. Your suppliers might even offer you a set of files.

Then, also, I always offer samples. It's easier to part with a little swatch and $0.42 postage then have a customer return the item because the color isn't exactly what they wanted.

[Limabean1975]

Flash is not going to help - just washes things out. I'm no pro, but I have a friend who takes beautiful pictures for her handspun yarn website. She takes OUTDOOR pictures absolutely as much as possible - even in the winter.

Take ALOT of shots - if you take 100 shots of the same thing, one is bound to turn out well! That's the magic of digital.

If outdoor is impossible, build yourself a light box. I have a link - I'll try to find it for you. eta here it is.

Consider taking a weekend amateur digital camera class.

Just with a brief glance, your website design looks good, but your photos do need help.
This may be just a matter of personal opinion, but I don't think it looks good when you cut off people's heads.

eta: Looking at your pictures, I'm wondering about the quality of your camera. Do you have anyone you could borrow a better camera from? Or invest in a better one - I don't know how to advise you on that, but I don't think you have to spend a lot for better outdoor pictures.

[rubelin]

Oh, I'd totally forgotten about using the scanner! (It's been years since I had to get new fabric pics!) For really big prints, I would make a version that showed the whole print in actual size and then thumbnails that showed a smaller version. I coded the fabric page so that people could click to see the large version if they wanted to, but it didn't make the page so huge. And always scan at as high a resolution as possible and then decrease the res. for the final pic (to 72dpi, which is standard for the web)

When I said lots of light, I did not mean flash. Like Limabean said, use sunlight if poss and a lightbox inside or just a whole lot of lamps aimed from different angles to avoid getting shadows.

I also agree that you need to work on your cropping and maybe use bigger pics. Is there a way to have each style/fabric on it's own page so you can show lots of pics of each?? I don't know how PayPal carts work if that's possible.

[ABand3]

I think it would help to have consistency across all the pictures - the outdoor shot of the carrier with red straps isn't bad, if you could do similar outdoor shots, with similar poses, similiar camera angle, etc. If someone needs a really close up accurate photo of the color of the fabric, it probably better to just send a sample as a pp mentioned.

[Shane]

Ok, I'm listening. I haven't changed anything yet, because I'm taking time to get over the holiday. I stayed up till 3:30 cleaning so that I could spend some time on the website today. Who new ds was going to have a stomach flu today?

I've also wondered wether shots of the carrier being modeled or just scanned pics of the fabric were the best way to go. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some new shots done, upload them and see how it looks.

[HipGal]

I think you should aim for all your photos showing the carriers in use. It is very difficult for anyone to get a good picture with something lying down. Plus then you get to have cute babies in your pictures, which always makes people smile!

Your pictures are a larger file size than they should be. I would expect an image of the size you are showing to typically be like 30K, not 300K. This makes the page load more slowly. I don't know what image software you are using. I use photoshop and use "save for web" to get the file size down.

Also, I think your front page should make it more obvious how to get right to the "Buy" area. Right now you have "Baby Carriers" under Home, Services, About Us and Contact Us. It should be at the top and be really obvious. Maybe a "Shop Now!" image/link at the top? Something that make it really obvious how to get shopping.

I would take that first paragraph out so that your image and quick bullet points are at the top. If you want to tell people about your low prices, maybe a large pretty banner that says "More Affordable Than Ever!" or something. Most people aren't going to read that much when they are online - they just skim and click quickly.

Hope that helps a bit!

- Kari

[Mama Dragon]

I also noticed the pictures take a long time to load even with my DSL, you will want to make a copy of each photo and resize it to a "thumbnail" size to open up the bigger photo. Having each carrier shown in the same manner (same pose) and a close up of the fabric for each is good too. Outdoors is best, earlier morning so it's bright but not really really "high noon" bright.