Welcome to Day two of the Shop Owner Challenge, Shapies! Today, Anthony, a Senior Interaction Designer here at Shapeways, teaches you how to crop your product photos for free! We’ll have a few more photography tips over the course of the Challenge, but knowing how to edit your photos outside of programs like photoshop, as well as our photo dimensions for the site is a crucial first step to more sales!

There are several places around Shapeways where you can upload images. The most obvious and prominent is your product page. Other key areas include your user avatar, shop banner, and shop logo. Sizing and cropping these images correctly will have a significant effect on how your products and shop are perceived. Check out my free and easy video tutorial on how to make your images look just right above.

Here are some examples of what not to do:

In the images above, notice that the cropping is poor and and there is an incorrect size ratio. The correct sizes for photos on Shapeways are as follows:

Product Page: 625px wide by 465px tall
Shop Logo: 220px wide by 165px tall
Shop Banner: 960px wide by 125px tall
Avatar: 200px wide by 200px tall

Pro Tip from Savannah: Be sure and upload an Avatar! Shapeways is a community powered company and it’s way more fun to buy from a designer who has personality expressed through their thumbnail. We know our smile avatar is cool, but trust you can be far more creative. 

Here are some examples of excellent photo uploads:

Special Thanks to Anthony for taking the time to put together this tutorial. You can download Pixlr, the software he demonstrates with, for free here. Cheers (from Anthony) to another great day of our Shop Owner Challenge! Looking forward to bringing you more goodies tomorrow. Questions and comments are always welcome!