Do your photos need more zing? Give them a little “Bling”

December 19, 2007 | In Best Practices, Getting Started | 7 Comments

It’s no secret that the quality of a store’s product images can have a significant impact on its sales. If you’ve invested time and effort to refine your product images, then you’ve likely found image editing can be a labor-intensive process, especially when removing and replacing backgrounds or improving the overall quality. So when I recently came across Vangie Beal’s ECommerce-Guide review of Bling! It, a new program Beal claimed could be used to easily accomplish these tasks in just a few minutes, I had to try it for myself.

As it turns out, Beal was right. While nothing compares to having professional-looking product photos to work with, Bling! It can help you correct less than stellar images with a few clicks of your mouse, and doesn’t require you to be a graphic design whiz. Most notable—and even fun—is the edge finding tool, which dissects your image into pieces (like a jigsaw puzzle), and allows you to adjust the tool’s level of detail as you work. Clicking inside of these pieces using the local brush applies a mask to these areas, and removes them from the final image.

When giving it a test run, I decided to use a slightly blurry photo that needed both a sharper focus and for the background to be removed. By using the edge finding tool and local brush to remove the background, setting a solid background color, applying the sharpen image option and adding a standing shadow, in about five minutes my photo went from this:

Blurry photo of a plush toy dog against a purple and black background

to this:

Photo of plush toy dog after editing image with Bling! It

All-in-all, Bling! It requires a minimal investment of time to achieve very valuable results.

Bling! It can be downloaded as a 15-day free trial from Vertus’ website, and it sells for $49.95 (available for Windows only). Until February 21, 2008, Vertus is kindly extending a discount of $5 to Yahoo! Store blog readers. Use the coupon code BIYSTORE on the order page to take advantage of this offer.

Remember, having good product photos to work with is always the best option. Using a lightbox to achieve good lighting with virtually no background, or paying attention to lighting, focus, placement and angle, and positioning your product against a high-contrast, solid color background (if you plan to remove the background later) will only benefit you and save more time when editing your image. Often, though, product photos come from manufacturers and may not always be of the best quality. Bling! It is a nice option for merchants who would rather not re-shoot product photos, making it easy to display attractive images that can help generate sales.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

7 Comments »

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  1. Hello Jennifer,
    Thank you for writing this article – great Bling! by the way ;-)

    I would quickly like to add, that we are very close to releasing a Mac version of Bling! It. This will probably be early next year.

    If the readers of this blog are interested in this they are more than welcome to email me on blingit[at]vertustech[dot]com and I can keep them informed.

    Many thanks and Happy Holidays everyone!
    Steve0
    Bling! It

    Comment by Steve0 — December 20, 2007 #

  2. [...] Read Article in Full >> SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Bling! It Reviewed on Offical Yahoo! Store Blog”, url: “http://www.blingit.us/blog/2007/12/20/bling-it-reviewed-on-offical-yahoo-store-blog/” }); [...]

    Pingback by Bling! It Reviewed on Offical Yahoo! Store Blog | Bling! It Blog — December 20, 2007 #

  3. What a great article! You are right about giving your photos some bling. I hate to say it, but it has made the difference for me on my ebay site. I sell virtually every thing I list and when I compare my photos with those of others who are selling the same objects, mine look so much better! I can’t believe people flippantly put any photo up there. You’ve got to be professional in all aspects of your business if you want to establish legitimacy and trust with the public.

    Comment by Justine — December 29, 2007 #

  4. I’m glad someone finally showed me this software. It’s so much easier to use then the “leading brands” – and I emailed their tech support which respond within a day – they WILL allow you 2 full install activations so that you can use the purchased software on 2 seperate machines. What a great deal !!

    Comment by Pat — January 6, 2008 #

  5. I have been waiting for this kind of software. $45 is really a good deal!

    Comment by The Dog Clothes Company — January 11, 2008 #

  6. Thanks for the comments guys, really is appreciated!
    I’d just like to add that Bling! It is now available on Mac!

    Also we’re currently working on more training videos to show you how to get the most out of Bling! It – is there anything in particular you would like to see?

    Many thanks
    Steve0
    Bling! It

    Comment by Steve0 — January 13, 2008 #

  7. Great piece of software, thanks.
    Bling..

    Comment by Adam Humphreys — April 17, 2008 #

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