Have you ever noticed poor quality photos online? It’s hard to miss them in 2017. Whenever you’re scrolling through a website and spot a bad photo it sticks out like a sore thumb. Here are a few reasons why.
The image has just been taken badly. A lot of small business owners will settle for the bare minimum when taking photos for their websites and social media. They might get themselves in the picture or use a really low quality camera and think they’re doing wonders saving money on hiring a photographer or asking someone who knows how to use a camera.
The quality just sucks. A lot of images are not even suitable for web use. They’re low resolution leaving users confused as to why they were even chosen for the website.
These can easily be avoided. When taking your photos make sure you’re using a high resolution camera (your smartphone has one built into it!). A lot of people forget about lighting when it comes to taking photos. Spending even 30 seconds setting this up can dramatically change the look and the feel of the image, whether you’re taking photos of the office or products you intend to sell.
Editing your photos is essential to draw people in. Not everyone has access to software such as Photoshop but there are apps you can install to your phone which will be able to change how your photos look.
Google Snapseed is a free to use photo editor for both IOS and Android devices; it has an easy to use interface with impressive results.
Instagram is notorious for having quick filters you can slap onto your holiday photos, but most people don’t realise that there is a full manual photo editor for photos. You can use Instagram to edit photos by editing the photo and upload it with the phone in aeroplane mode, it will save to the device then you can stop the image from uploading: a really easy way to change how images look, here is an example from when I went to New York edited using the editing tools on Instagram.
These are only small differences to enhance the image but software such as Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom will allow you to seriously change your photo game. They’re used by professionals to really make their images stand out. The only downside of using professional software is the initial cost and the learning curve of the programs.
Another way to get great images for your website is to avoid taking them yourself; you could get photos off of a stock photo website where you’ll pay a flat fee for a photograph which is already edited. Websites such as https://www.shutterstock.com/ and https://www.istockphoto.com/gb have thousands of photos for you to choose from.
If you need photos of your products or business itself, then you could hire a photographer. They’ll have years of experience and will be able to take professional quality photos of your business which can draw in customers.
First impressions count, make a positive one.