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Supercharge Your eBay™ Images!

The biggest concern for any image on the web is the size of the image file - too large a file will dramatically increase the download time; that is the time it takes for the image to appear on the page. Statistically it has been shown that a typical user will wait only 7 to 10 seconds for the content to appear on a web page before leaving the site. A large image file can slow down a web page to a snail’s pace, and reduce its chances of being seen to a minimum. So with this fact in mind we should realise that download time is one of the most important considerations in designing web pages, and an eBay item listing is simply another web page; so it applies equally well.

In short; if somebody has to wait ages for the picture in your eBay listing to appear, then the chances are they aren't going to wait around and instead will move on. But don't worry! Here is how to supercharge your eBay images...

I am using the freeware image-editing program Irvanview for the example, but any other software will do the job just as well.

Upon launching Irvanview you will be presented with the main window. Open your image in the usual way by selecting File/Open/… etc

The image I have loaded here is in the TIF format and is a whopping 3.9 Megabytes. It is also considerably larger than the maximum screen size, so the first thing to do is zoom out to see the whole picture.

Cropping
Once you can see the full picture, consider if the image will benefit from cropping. This is a simple process to remove any unnecessary area around the main focus of the picture.

If your picture will benefit from cropping, then simply click and drag the mouse cursor around the portion of the image you want to keep, then from the menu select Edit/Crop Selection (or press CTRL+Y).

The outer area will be removed leaving a more concise picture, as seen below:

Re-sizing
The next thing to do is to re-size the picture. There are 2 parts to this, firstly the DPI (Dots Per Inch) resolution should be set – Images for the Web will be more than adequate at 72dpi. Secondly, the actual pixel dimensions should be reduced to a more realistic size for a computer monitor. The actual size you choose will depend on how big you would like the image to appear on the page, but bear in mind that this will differ depending on the user’s screen resolution. Take into account the fact that some users still have the relatively low screen resolution of 640pixels wide by 480 pixels high, so anything larger than this will mean that the user has to scroll to see the whole image. Personally I would consider 500 x 500 pixels an absolute maximum for an image on the Web.

Select Image/Resize/Resample…

In the example we can see that the DPI resolution is already set to 72, so that’s fine. If it were any higher then it would be simple to edit this figure to 72. Next we need to change the width and height to an appropriate size for a computer monitor. In the example below I have chosen a width of 450 pixels (the height has been calculated automatically by Irfanview because I have chosen to preserve the aspect ratio by ticking the box lower down).

Once these dimensions are set, click on OK and your picture will be re-sized accordingly.

Saving the results
Finally, choose Save As from the File menu and select the appropriate file format for your image. A JPG will offer the best compression and therefore the smallest file size, but if the picture contains only a few broad colours, a GIF will usually render to a higher quality on screen. Photographs should always be saved as JPG.

The result is that now our picture file has gone from 3.9 Megabytes to an incredible 10.4 Kilobytes – a huge reduction in file size!

Conclusion
Using the example above, we can see that in its original TIF format at the original size our picture was 3.9 Megabytes. Using a dial up connection of 56K, an image of this size would take several minutes to be rendered on a user’s monitor. After cropping, resizing and saving as a compressed JPG, the file is only 10.4 Kilobytes – quite a dramatic improvement, especially considering that it will now take just 0.25 seconds to download to the user’s screen!

Acknowledgement
Irfanview is an excellent freeware image-editing program available from www.irfanview.com. Regular users should consider showing their appreciation for the hard work that has gone into programming this application by registering and making a donation.