The top 5 handmade product photo mistakes + how to avoid them

if there is one thing that's an absolute must if you want to sell your handmade product online successfully its mastering product photography it's not necessarily easy if you don't have experience at all to learn how to take your own picture so it's understandable that you might think this is good enough I've worked on this for a few hours I'm just gonna post this listing with this picture that we'll do but unfortunately our expectations as customers into this well right up there for pictures and for photography we spend our days looking at beautiful pictures on Instagram and social media and so we're really used to have been really beautiful imagery when we're purchasing items online so if you are serious about growing a successful and profitable handmade shop you need to pay attention to your product photography and in this video I want to give you some practical and actionable tips we're going to review the top 5 mistakes that I see handmade sellers make ways their pictures and then also talk about how to avoid those mistakes and fix them let's dive in hi I'm Deb the founder of tea zydeco a membership community for makers and handmade shop owners and I'm really excited to talk about product photography today it's a topic that I think is really really important if you want to make sales online so let's dive straight into it with mistake number one mistake number one is the wrong white balance now white balance is also referred to as color temperature so if you've heard cold temperature or white balance in the past and really talking about the same thing and what it is is this spectrum just like a thermometer we're on the coldest side your whites in your picture so Morphin and not if you're shooting with your product in front of the white background that white background is going to look a little purple or a little blue and then on the warmer side of things it's going to use a little bit yellowish or even a little bit orange so how do we avoid our pictures looking purple or yellow and keeping the whites looking white well the first thing is you is that color temperature that spectrum we just talked about is actually measured with a unit called kelvins so you might never have heard of it before but it's actually on any light bulb packaging that you would see at the supermarket if you buy a light bulb it will actually tell you this is 2000 K or 5000 K so that you know what kind of color temperature that light source is going to create for you and because what we want to do is make sure that in your pictures the white looks the same as in real life in natural daylight we want to try to mimic that daylight as closely as possible and the natural daylight Kelvin temperature is between 5000 and around 6000 K kelvins so when you're buying if you're going to be shooting inside with artificial light you want to make sure that you're using a light bulb that's around 5000 and five-minute K to make sure that you mimic the natural daylight as closely as possible the second tip is to actually set your camera white balance to match the color temperature that you know you're using so what you can do is of course if you but you bought the light bulb and you know that it is actually four hundred four thousand and five hundred kelvins then you go into your camera and you tell your camera hey the light source I'm using is four thousand and five hundred kelvins in your camera or to adjust so that the whites looks white now if you have a DSLR so a manual camera obviously is going to be a setting for that but if you're using your smartphone with which most of you guys are probably doing and that's fair enough because they're really good enough these days you can also do that I recommend you download an app that's free that's called vsco and as you can see here it will let you adjust with a little scale the color temperature before you actually take the shot to make sure that your whites are white and then my last tip when it comes to color temperature is for those of you who are thinking but they have I already have the light bulbs and I really don't know what color temperature they are so how do I figure this out and they are apps that can help you do that and I think I did pay something like $2 for the one I'm about to mention so feel free look for free options up there but I think that $2 it's still pretty reasonable knowing that this is really important for you to be able to make sales getting that right and the app I use is called a SPE vo but you can also look it up under life spectrum Pro and that I need as you can see in my little screen recording here you simply open the app and then you sort of look around and you know I'm just moving it around here hello just to show you that as I'm moving in the room the number at the top which is the kelvins is changing and it's telling me what the color temperature is actually like so really handy to have if you already have like books and you're not sure what the color temperature is when you're taking a picture then this is really easy just look at it through your phone and then you're ready to make the adjustment that you need this sake number two is a bad exposure and what bad exposure really means is bad lighting so in one case your picture is too dark and that means it's been underexposed and on the other side your picture is way too bright and it's been overexposed so it's really a fine balance between getting enough light but not too much light the reason we want to avoid underexposing or overexposing is first because it doesn't look good and you lose details on your products when it's underexposed because the picture the pixels actually go dark and black and when it's overexposed the pixels are actually getting burnt and they turn white in part of your pictures and it's not something that you can even fix even with editing so we want to avoid that and how do we do that well we want to be close enough to the source of light so that you do get enough light but we don't want to let it be directly onto the product so if you are using natural sunlight then you want to make sure that you're close enough to source of light so let's say your window but that you're not letting the sunbeams directly hit your products and so instead you want to be in the shade or you want to be using one of those light four boxes to make show that the Sun is coming through that and it's being filtered through that light box before reaching your product and if you're using artificial lights then the same apply you don't want a light bulb to be directly reflecting onto the product and directly beaming onto the product you want to use one of those white umbrellas or a light box to make sure that the light bulb is sending lights that's being filtered really through the umbrella or the light box before reaching your product mistake number three is a weird or awkward angle now this one is a little harder to explain but really the idea is to use common sense to sort of pick the right angle I wish to shoot your pictures because if you don't you're really going to distort the perspective and whatever product or object you're taking a picture of is going to look longer or wider or you know just weird so to avoid it my my best tip is really to think about how people in real life if your product was selling in its shop would hold and look at this product so if I'm using my dirty mug here if I'm in a shop I'm realistically never going to look at it from like an awkward like diagonal angle I'm always going to look at it like this because I want to see the front of it and I'll look in and then maybe I'll look down to see what's written at the bottom of it but I'm never gonna be on an awkward sort of in-between angle so it's really important to think about that because first people can't touch the product so they want to see what they would want to see in real life and also because again if you take it from a weird angle you're gonna you're going to make it look wider at the bottom than it is at the top when it's not like that in real life and so we don't want to have some distortion of perspective here mistake number four has to do is cropping and really that's something I see in so many different shops all over the internet all over XE and it's really easy to fix but it's really important to fix it because if you don't crop so proppy means sizing your image properly for whichever platform the picture is being used on so what you want to have is your product I'm using my mug again at the center of the image I don't want to be too zoomed in I don't want to be too far away from it and I definitely don't want to have one bit of it cut off by the side of the picture and only see the middle of the cup what you want is really to be able to see the product in the picture it is entirely for it to be not too close and not too far away so not too zoomed in not not too zoomed out and so that's really important because it means that you might need to crop and size each image differently if you're using it on Pinterest or on Instagram on Etsy or on your own website and for whatever use you want to make of it but please try to think about the platform and where this image is going to be used and make sure that I can see your product in its entirety and that it's not being cut because dark is not going to help you get click and that is not going to help you get sales last mistake mistake number five has to do with editing and there's two sides to that mistake one is you are not editing your pictures at all or enough and the other is you're eating them too much but one thing is clear is that you always need to edit your pictures even if you follow all the tips we've covered in this video even if your setup is perfect there is always something that you can improve even slightly with a bit of editing it could be the brightness it could be the color adjustment as we've talked about color temperature and all of that good stuff but really you need to be editing a picture to make sure that they look as best as they can now don't take it too far because you risk falling into the other side of that issue which is editing too much and anything too much means that you've gone a little bit too far maybe because your eyes get really used when we're eating a picture of being on your phone or on a desktop app you do a change and another one and another and you forget what your original picture your original shot actually look like so it's really easy to get carried away I've definitely been there myself but it's important to check you know have I taken this too far because I see pictures online where you can't see any shadows at all and that's just not real it doesn't look real to the to the human eyes so you don't want to delete your background and your shadows and talie because that looks like your product is sort of flying you don't want to push the brightness too much because that sort of changes your colors and then your your cute little pink like this mug that I keep on show you guys I love this mug might become so bright that it's not actually the real colors and then people are going to receive the product angle that's not what I ordered we definitely don't want that and then too much editing just really make your image look like it's not real so we don't want to go too far but do edit your pictures if you don't know how to get started with editing your pictures I recommend you watch another video I've made and I'll link to it below this one all about editing apps and the one that I recommend if you're just getting started being on your phone or on your desktop so if you're interested in learning more about that and diving into more product photography videos then check out the link just below and that's it for today guys I hope this was helpful and that it will help you improve your images I would love to hear from you let me know below in the comments what did you learn in this video that you think you're going to be able to apply to improve your images and make sure to subscribe to my channel so you get a notification each time I release a new video which is every Tuesday and always with the goal of helping you start and grow a successful and profitable handmade shop and finally you will also find below this video the link to my free resource library for makers and handmade shop owners it's completely free to access and there's a lot of guys and checklists and workbooks in there to help you take your shop to the next level whether you're just starting out or you already have experience so check it out I'm sure will be helpful and I'll talk to you next Tuesday bye bye it's really to be able to see the product in the picture it is entirely in his entirety I can't pronounce that moving on and it is entirety and what bad exposure really means is bud lightning it is entirely this is really important

Channel: Deborah Engelmajer

Views: 11,747

Keywords: etsy product photography tips, etsy shop mistakes, handmade product photography tips, handmade shop mistakes, how to photograph handmade products, how to photograph products for etsy, how to take pictures of etsy products, how to take pictures of handmade products, top 5 handmade product photo mistakes, etsy product photos, fix handmade product photos, improve etsy photos, improve etsy product photos, improve handmade product photos, tips handmade product photos

Id: t_5qAFw01KQ

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2019