Image cleanup

[MyShinyCar]

I'm a complete e-commerce virgin, and I'm learning as I go. I've contacted several of my suppliers and discussed my website plans and I'm pleasantly surprised by their assistance.

As a result I've got lots of images for the products I'm listing, but many of them are very poor when viewed on the website. Does anyone have advice on simple and straightforward way to clean and sharpen them up without getting all 'photoshop'-ey?

The emphasis is on the word 'simple'. And 'straightforward'. Also 'quick'... :rolleyes:

[Red Devil]

A good free piece of software for image resizing, sharpening, manipulation etc.,. is Irfanview. Its much easier than Photoshop for the "beginners".

www.irfanview.com (http://www.irfanview.com)

As well as the standrad ifranview download remember to download the plugins if you want to optimise your images for "save for web". The standard resizing and sharpening are in the basic download, however.

Non-free software I would recommend is Paint Shop Pro and of course Photoshop.

Always create a back up copy of the image before working on the original in case your changes don't produce the results you want.

Alternatively, other websites may have the same photo from the manufacturer but of a better quality so use "Google images" to serach for them. Be careful not to infringe copyright rules if they use their own produced images. Likewise, some manufacturers don't like you using their images without their permission. Always best to use a large size image if you can so your customers can see it in more detail when they click on "zoom".

[mikepayn]

As "Red Devil" says plus you can try http://vectormagic.com/home. You can try it out for free then it's about £5 a month. I use it regularly to clean up manufacturers images.

[Neil]

If you have a large amount that require the same editing then use batchphoto, but its not free.

[Bather]

I use irfan view, really easy and free. The save for web is ideal to re-size to a sensible file size.