400X300 How to avoid distortion

Hi, is it colour or shape distortion you are experiencing I usually find it is colour when it does happen.

I suspect you are not shrinking the image in jpg format within Photoshop so it looks better there. If you are not process the image in Photoshops's own format and save in jpg. and upload to Auctiva.

Most items I list are in portrait and are processed in jpg from my little camera, upload at 768px high and display ok.

Distortion is defininatly a problem when a jpg format image is shrunk, but at 600px high it would not have been shrunk in supersize mode, in the default listing size of 400x300 maximum view yes.

Hi thanks so much for your time. My camera automatically saves my images in jpg format so at least that shouldn't be an issue.

Most of my photos have been fine with the compression but I have a handful of items where it has been really frustrating to try and get a decent image to show on the listing.

Guess it sounds like I'll just have to live with it though, or perhaps use a different image host for those specific items?

Thanks again for your time and for trying to help me out

Hi, some items can be difficult regardless of the host, fringing effects when taking pictures of stripey garments, certain colours, I always found bright red to be worst.

Just always upload at the maximum resolution you want the item to be seen at, no larger, wastes time and means that your jpg images are processed twice which certainly increases the likelyhood of colour distortion.

Consider that eBay will squeeze the image down to 400x300 for the standard listing picture and more so for the header and gallery if selected then the choice of host is irrlevent.

Supersizing by Auctiva is free, expensive with eBay, I would experiment a bit more and stay with Auctiva as the picture host to reap the financial benefits, and it gets rather messy using multuiple hosts

Good luck

Thanks so much for your time. I'm glad to know it's not just me, the items I am having the most trouble with are bright red, houndstooth and checked.

I will keep working on Auctiva as it has made life much easier and my listings tend to look much nicer. If you don't mind I'd love to check out your listings?

Hi, no wonder you are having fun, well I can give you a couple of tips.

I had a severe fringing effect with a jacket I sold for my wife.

A way of getting over fringing with something like houndstooth and the like is to change the density of the fabric pattern relative to the camera's sensor array (basically the component behind the lens which converts light to electrical signals).

As you cannot change either what I did was photograph the jacket from nearly 3m away and zoom in with camera and the effect was significantly reduced.

Alternatively take the picture at high resolution (again from a distance) and zoom and crop down with your favourite photo processing software.

With a little experimentation you can find what works for you and your camera.

P.S. sorry I prefer to stay anonymous

Thanks for the tips, I will certainly give it a try. I've also been reading up that some lighting tricks can help with those issues as well.

I totally respect your privacy and appreciate the kindness you've shown in offering your time. Best wishes to you and I'm sure I'll "see" you around the boards.

Happy to help, be seeing you

G'day,

My 2pence/cents worth.
My photo's are sometimes ridiculous sizes in their original state; anything from 2mb to 49mb.

I retouch them in Photoshop, save the original off in Photoshop's own format, then watermark the photo. After that I do a 50% reduction cutting the file size way down, and save as a .jpg file which is then used for the supersized and thumbnail images. I also save the image with the ratio locked and using the, 'bicubic' setting which keeps everything in proportion.

As far as I know there are no problems for people who then view the altered images. (I do state that the image is a degraded one)

K.

Hi- Thanks for the helpful reply. Sorry for the delay in replying but I hadn't realized a new message had been entered. I believe what I'm doing is pretty similar to what you've stated so, hopefully the problem isn't too bad. Hopefully, I'll eventually get it all worked out! Thanks so much for your time. -S

You're welcome.

Just an Auctiva newbie, myself. I like it! And passing along where possible little things I've learnt from the helpful ones on here.

K