Product Photo Editing and Retouching Boosts Your Online E-Commerce Business

E-Commerce has become norm of the day. Every other day, you see that a new virtual shop has come up in the online market. The competition is getting stiffer, and so e-Commerce retailers have to be on their toes to get maximum leverage for their business. Among many ways to make online store enticing for the buyers, photo editing and retouching for ecommerce has become one of the most sought-after methods.

Change is constant; take a look around, everything is changing at jet pace. In fact, with a rapid technological advancement; there is a 360 degree turn in every walk of life! Even the very basic activity of buying and selling has undergone tremendous transformation; and the conventional marketplace is now replaced by various supremely advanced online stores.

E-Commerce has become the norm of the day. Every other day, you see that a new virtual shop comes up in the online market. The competition is getting stiffer, and so eCommerce retailers have to be on their toes to leverage their business. Among many ways to make online store enticing for buyers, photo editing and retouching for ecommerce has become one of the most sought-after methods.

Why Do You Need High-Quality Product Images for e-Commerce Sites?

To attract customers; you will say – That is absolutely right!

Visual appeal is the key factor that apparently attracts any potential online buyer - clearer the image with high-definition; better are the chances of making a store appealing and getting a strong online presence.

In fact, customers gauge products through these images; so, these images have to convey the message properly; it should not look too small or too big; neither should it look blurred nor should it have unwanted shadows or background that eventually mars the aesthetic and visual appeal of objects.

In fact, if you look at common trends that effect and degrade your sales include:

• Customers are not sure how exactly the item looks like; which directly affects their purchasing instincts.
• The images become the mouthpiece of overall brand identity. A poorly presented site reflects directly on the business lagging behind it.

In fact, in a very recent survey done by "Internet Retail Conference & Exhibition", it was observed that around 75% of respondents considered the most crucial feature of online shopping, to be the high quality of products images.

Now the big question is how does an image editing service improve your product images for eCommerce?

There are several eCommerce retailers, who are not very keen to hire image editing service providers; as most of them think that upon hiring a good photographer, they don't need any retouching.

Undoubtedly, a good photographer will get you the best results; but let's not forget that they work on a machine; which at times may not yield desired quality of images. And it is here that you have to go for image editing services to get the best quality of product photos.

What Does It Really Do?

Change in Size/Resolution: Size/resolution forms a very crucial part in today's eCommerce environment. Images need to have proper resolution; they should neither be too big that it takes eternity to load; nor too small; that it is not even visible to a potential buyer. When you go for professional image editors; you can get the right resolution which will show the product as it is and thus help buyers to get exact idea of your product.

Zoom-in: Most customers desire to view fine details of the product; hence you need to highlight it. Image retouching experts use zoom functionality to address the purpose.

Proper Shadowing: Right kind of Shadows can create wonders and add that extra effect to product shots upon applying correct lighting. However; at times the camera may not produce the required effect; and here photo retouching services comes handy. You can go ahead to add proper shadows later on; to bring in that attractiveness to product images.

Alignments: Consistency is a vital aspect when it comes to alignment of images. Using same alignment for store images gives a consistency across all your images and entire site as well. And this consistency, in turn improves the overall feel and look of your site.

Colors: Colors are a critical component of any image; dull or faded or even too bright colors can spoil product images. Since, it is the vital factor to show your customers the finest details of the product they intend to buy, photo retouching services helps you in correcting the color scheme and making it more balanced. So if you are into fashion online retailing, image editing is for you!

Backgrounds: For most product images, a plain white background is considered to be the best; since it makes the product stand out making it more appealing. However, sometimes, you might have some product images with a different background; and getting another photo-shoot for a white background can be really expensive. With professional image retouching services, you can get the background changed into white and thus, giving your product the required 'outstanding' attractiveness.

Shot Angle: Displaying the images from various angles to give a better view to buyers; with image editing service, you can display the image for that view of it in different angles.

See Also: The Amazing World of Image Editing & Retouching Services

Any product that has a great visual appeal will definitely make it possible to have that great looking online eCommerce store that can effectively boost your sales.

Reference: http://www.techulator.com/resources/14623-Product-Photo-Editing-and-Retouching-Boosts-Your-Online-E-Commerce-Business.aspx

Add a Fresh Splash to your Design

In this tutorial, I’ll show you several techniques for enhancing a basic banner design for a product or service. These techniques can be employed to add a fresh splash to many of your designs!

The Finished Ad

Before we begin, lets take a look at what the finished result looks like.

Images We’re Using

Before we can create the ad, we need to have the images for it. I’ve decided to use the following:

• Blue Soda Bottle
• Leaf #1
• Leaf #2
• Splash

Or you can download them here.

Step 1 – Creating the Background

Create a new document, mine is 500x647px. Grab your Gradient Tool and set it to Radial Gradient. I feel like making a green inspired ad, so I’m going to use #ceed12 as my foreground color and #186600 as my background color. Create a gradient near the lower left corner of the document.

Create a new layer, and grab the Reflected Gradient Tool. Set the blending mode to Difference and create an effect like the one shown below by creating multiple gradients on the same layer. (Use black and white as the foreground and background colors)


Once this is done, set the blending mode of the reflected gradient layer to Soft Light and lower the opacity till you get an effect that you like.

Step 2 – Working on the Bottle

Now that the background is complete, lets bring the bottle into the ad and re-size it.

Use the Magic Wand Tool to select the white area and delete it. Then reposition it in the bottom left corner and rotate it so that the cap points to the upper right.

I want to change the color of the bottle to green so that it matches with the rest of the ad. To do this, create a new layer, then Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail of the layer containing your bottle. Select a nice green color, and fill the selection of the bottle on your new layer with it. Then change the blending mode of the layer to Hue.

With the bottle still selected, create another new layer, and use a soft black brush and run it along the sides of the bottle. Then set the blending mode of the layer to Soft Light.

Step 3 – Adding Leaves and Splash

Bring the leaves into the ad the same way you brought the bottle in, and then place them in front of and behind the bottle. You can use them multiple times and rotate them to get better effects.

Open the splash image. The only part of this image we want is the splash that is in the bottom right corner. To select this, we are going to select Color Ranges. Go to Select > Color Range. Use the Add to Sample Eyedropper and select different areas of the splash.

Click OK to select the areas that are in white. Remove the clouds from the selection by using a selection tool and holding alt.

Copy the splash and paste it onto a new layer in your ad. Re-size it and place it in the lower left corner on top of the bottle and the leaves. Then go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen to sharpen the splash. You may want to sharpen it a few times, but don’t overdue it. I also decided to grab a large soft eraser and partially erase the outer edge of the splash to soften it some.

Step 4 – Adding the Rings and Strokes

Adding the rings around the bottle is quite simple. Select a 3px brush. Then, grab the Ellipse Tool found under the Rectangle Tool. Using the Paths option, create a wide oval a little larger than the width of the bottle.


Right click, and choose Stroke Path. Then select the Brush from the drop down menu and make sure Stimulate Pressure IS checked. Press Esc to delete the path. Then apply the following Layer Styles (Right Click Layer > Blending Options):

Outer Glow

Color Overlay

All that’s left is to rotate the ring until its at a nice angle. To create more, simply duplicate the layer (Right Click > Duplicate Layer) and re-size them if needed.

To create the other strokes, use the Pen Tool, and apply the same layer styles shown above. Remember to place some layers behind the bottle and change opacity to create more effects.

Layer Styles

Right click a layer and copy its layer style to quickly paste the same layer styles onto a different layer.

To create the circles along the path, simply increase the spacing on your brush tool before you stroke the path.

Step 5 – Adding Some Fun to the Ad

Create a new layer below your bottle. Then grab a 19px hard brush and change the settings to the following:

Brush Tip Shape

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Color Dynamics

Then start brushing onto your new layer. Try to keep bigger circles next to the bottle and smaller ones as they move further away. Set the blending mode of the layer to Overlay when you are finished.

Do the same thing on a new layer with a smaller brush and lower the opacity of the layer.

I’m also going to add another splash layer that will lie between the circle layers. After I have my splash in place, I’m going to Ctrl+Click on the large circle layer, and delete this selection from my new splash layer. This way, the splash won’t appear under the circles, since the circle layers are set to Overlay.

Step 6 – Finishing Up

Since my bottle doesn’t have any labels, I’m going to add my own. I’m also going to place the logo of my drink in the bottom right corner and add some small circles around it.

And of course, here’s a PSD you can grab for free with the tutorial contents!

Download the PSD

 

Reference: http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/beverage-ad-enhancer/ 

How to Design Your Own Fashion Sale Flyer using Photoshop

Even amateurs these days can produce a well designed and very impressive fashion flyer designs. In this tutorial, I will talk about how you can design your own fashion sale portrait flyer using Adobe Photoshop.

Final Image

Even amateurs these days can produce a well designed and very impressive fashion flyer designs. Besides good fashion photography, it is about adding the right effects and filters that will add that chic look into the ad. In this tutorial, I will talk about how you can design your own fashion sale flyer using Adobe Photoshop. Even as an amateur, you should be able to easily do this on your own.

1. Let us start by setting up our flyer document. In this example we are creating a portrait flyer with the dimensions 4.25x5.5 inches. For printing, a 300 ppi resolution minimum is required for high quality printing. You might also want to change the color mode to CMYK, especially if you plan on having this printed professionally.

 

2. Once the document is open, we then paste in our primary feature image. In this case Tibcris in flickr here.

 

3. To extend the background a bit, we filled the actual background layer with black. Then, we erased the right part of the main image with large and soft eraser via the eraser tool. It is in this space that we will add the text and effects later.

4. Now, create a new layer by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+N. Name it any layer name you like. Using the gradient tool, apply a Radial Color Gradient of your choice unto our canvass. Do not worry about it covering our model now. Just make sure you position the radial gradient correctly unto the canvass.

5. Next, change this layer’s blend mode to “Color”. This applies the colors of the gradient unto our main model image below for a nice creative effect.

6. Great! Now the next step is to add some details. In our example, we are making this in time for the “Spring” Fashion season. So we add some nice floral custom shapes. These shapes are easily accessible from the Custom Shapes list in Photoshop.

7. Then, alter the opacity value of those different shapes so that they embed well with the colors and theme that we have for your full color flyer.

8. Good, now we will add an extra interesting effect. First create a new layer and name it “halftone”. Do this by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+N. Then switch to the Channels panel and create a new channel by clicking on the appropriate icon at the bottom of the panel.

9. Next, use a nice soft brush and paint a few spots of white unto our new channel. Make sure of course that you have the new layer you just created when doing this.

10. Afterwards, go to Filter -> Pixelate -> Color Halftone. Enter a value of 32 maximum for the Radius, however, you can lower this a bit as you see fit. Once you are satisfied with the settings just press OK.

11. Once you press OK, you should have a wonderful looking halftone pattern where your white blobs used to be.

12. Great! Next, hold down the CTRL key and then click on our Alpha 1 channel image thumbnail. This should select all the areas in the channel, now go back to the normal view by clicking on our new layer. Fill the selection with a color gradient from your color themes.

13. To finish of the creative halftone effect, we reduce the opacity of the layer to around 50%. If needed, you may also erase some parts of the halftone layer so that you can emphasize anything that was blocked by the design.

14. Afterwards, we will adjust the lightness of the image. Go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> levels. Change the value at the right a bit to lighten our image.

15. Afterwards, you then start typing in the text for the fashion advertisement flyer. Just choose a nice and clear font style that is easily understandable. Initially, it is best to use white font colors so that they are easier to see.

16. If you think some of the text is a bit hard to see with the white color, use the rectangle shape tool to create a colored rectangle behind the text. Just reduce the opacity to around 40% and you will help emphasize the text, making clearer and of course more noticeable.

FINAL IMAGE

Once you are done with the text, you should have your nice fashion advertisement flyer done! Congratulations!

 

Reference: http://tutzor.com/tutorials/how-design-your-own-fashion-sale-flyer-using-photoshop

Design a Professional Laptop Advert

Final Image:

Here is the final image that we will be creating:

Step 1:

Open up a new document 1000px wide and 600px high. Then paste an image of a laptop into your document. Create a new layer set called ‘laptop’ and put the layer containing your laptop image into this layer set.

Step 2:

Now I want to create a vanishing point for the screen of the laptop. Many Photoshop users, including myself, don’t yet have Photoshop CS2 or CS3, so this tutorial won’t utilize the useful vanishing point filter available in these versions. Instead, we’re going to manually create a fake vanishing point.
Select the screen part of your laptop using the lasso tool. Then copy your selection, create a new photoshop document, and paste in the selection. Go to image>image size and double whatever your image size is. In this case the original screen was 204px wide, so I simply doubled this to 408px.
Then paste this new larger screen back into your original document. Positioning it roughly where you think it looks good in terms of perspective.

Step 3:

Now select your line tool and a nice bright color for it and draw lines each corner of your large screen through to the matching corner of the original screen and past to a vanishing point. Do this with each corner of the laptop screen, until you have something like the image below:

Step 4:

Now duplicate your larger laptop screen and select edit>free transform. Then in the menu near the top of your screen (see diagram below) change the W (width) and H (height) percentages from 100% to 90%.

Move this resized image so that it matches up with the perspective lines that you created earlier. Be sure to place this resized screen layer behind the largest screen layer but above your original laptop photo layer.
Repeat this process of duplicating/resizing/aligning using the resizing percentages of 80%, 70%, and 60% from your large screen layer. Remember that your original laptop photo is 50% of this large screen layer.
This is how your image should look after you have created this new screens and lined them up correctly:

Step 5:

Now create a new layer set called ‘photo 1′. Paste in the image that you want to manipulate. View a grid over your image and then use the free transform tool to resize your photo to fit nicely into the grid squares. Make sure that the photo fits into an even number of grid squares for it’s height and width. In this example the photo is resized to be 8 grid squares wide and 6 high.

Step 6:

Now duplicate your photo layer, as you want to retain a copy. Be sure to hide the duplicate layer and go back to your original. Select your single column marquee tool from your selection palette (it’s under the Rectangle and Elliptical marquee tools). Using your grid click the grid line that marks the center point of your image and delete a central 1px column. Then switch to the single row marquee tool and do the same to delete a 1px line across the center of your image. You want these lines to be a little larger than 1px though, so grab your magic wand tool and click somewhere outside of your photo image. This will select all of the area surrounding the photo, but also the 1px lines cutting through it. Then go to select>modify>expand and expand the selection by 3px. Then hit delete to achieve an effect like the image below:

Step 7:

Now hide all of your duplicate laptop screens except the smallest one (the one that is 60% of the size of your largest). With your photo layer selected (the one you’ve just cut up using the grid) go to edit>transform>distort and distort the photo so that it fits exactly over this smallest laptop screen image. To fit it well you make need to reduce the layer’s opacity to allow the screen underneath to show though. The image below shows the transformed photo layer at 57% opacity, allowing some of the screen underneath to show through. Be sure to move this photo layer below the next largest laptop screen layer, so that it is mostly covered by it.

Step 8:

Now go back to your original photo layer. Duplicate it again, and using the same technique as before with the single row/column marquee tools cut it into 2X2 squares using the grid. As the image is 8 squares wide and 6 high, this will result in 12 squares each 4 grid squares in size. Again, use your magic wand tool to select the area around the photo and the lines cutting through it, then expand your selection by 3px and hit delete. Then use the distort transform tool to fit your new image to the 2nd smallest laptop screen. Remember again to move this photo layer behind the next largest laptop screen layer. The image below shows the result of this, with the photo layer again at 57% to allow me to nicely fit it to the screen image beneath.

Step 9:

Now repeat these steps, but make your squares half the size each time. So using the grid that will then be 1X1, 1/2X1/2, 1/4X1/4. To cut the photo into 1/2 and 1/4 grid square pieces I would recommend just using your judgement, but if you want to be really picky you can use rulers. Another tip is to duplicate the photo after cutting it into the squares, as this will save you having to repeat the slicing process right from the start each time.

Step 10:

Here is the same image but with all duplicate laptop screen image layers hidden and all photo layer’s with 100% opacity.

Step 11:

Now is the time-consuming part. Hide all of your photo layers except for your smallest photo layer. Use your magic wand tool set at 255 tolerance to select entire squares and delete them to leave a checkerboard effect. To do this simply go down each column deleting squares, being sure to leave a square remaining between each two that you delete. Then move onto the next column and repeat, but make sure that no squares you delete are next to an already deleted square, deleted squares should be diagonal to each other. The image below shows the various stages of doing this with each photo layer:

Step 12:

You should still have your original photo layer, as it was duplicated for safe keeping near the start of the tutorial. Duplicate the layer again, and move it so that it is the first layer above your laptop image layer. Then go to edit>transform>distort and fit the photo nicely over the laptop screen. Then hide all of your vanishing point guidelines and make sure that all of your checkerboard photo layers are visible. Seeing as all these layers are within the same layer set select the layer set and drag it to make the graphic more central in your document.

Step 13:

Right click on one of your photo squares layers and click blending options. Apply the drop shadow settings shown below. Then once this has been applied right click on the drop shadow shown in your layers palette, select ‘copy layer style’ and paste the layer style to all of your other photo squares layers. The outcome is shown below:

Step 14:

Now create a new layer set below your laptop/photos layer set called ‘background’. Hide your laptop/photos layer set. Create a new layer and fill it with a white to light gray radial blur.

Step 15:

Paste a metal texture onto a new layer above your radial gradient layer and reduce it’s opacity to 20% for a subtle textured effect.

Step 16:

Now create some bendy lines across your background using the pen tool. Be sure to have a white 1px brush selected and then once you have created your bendy pen line right click on it and select ‘stroke path’. Then simply duplicate your line layer until you have multiple white lines across your background. I merged all of my line layers together and reduced the merged layer opacity to 30% for a more subtle effect.

And we’re done!

To finish things off I added some cool text. Click the image below if you want the full sized version.

Reference: http://psd.fanextra.com/tutorials/designing/design-a-professional-laptop-advert/