Attractive pictures are a very important part of your auctions, and crummy pictures can practically kill an otherwise great sale. The most common question I get is how do you get the item on that white background so they look like they are floating?

Well, this effect can be accomplished a couple of ways. First, if you see pictures that look exactly like the ones on the Gymboree or Gap websites, that's probably because they are the ones from those websites.

While copying a company's stock photos and inserting them into eBay auctions used to be a common practice, many companies eventually figured out what was happening and now take a very dim view of people making unauthorized use of their copyrighted photos. Gymboree actively pursues eBay auctions that use their photos and has them shut down . Please don't try this at home.

The best way to get excellent pictures into your auctions is to learn to take them yourself. And of course this is what we will teach you to do in the rest of this article.

YOUR OWN PICTURES

For items that you want to photograph yourself you need two things: a background and a light source. Personally, I really like the bright white background because it does look so much like the pictures on the websites.

For smaller items, I use white posterboard, which works very well, and for larger ones I used to use white butcher paper, which wrinkles easily. I have recently switched to using a big white sheet, which seems to work well and also has the advantage of being washable.

TAKING PICS OUTSIDE

Once you have your items arranged in a lifelike fashion on your background (bend the jeans at the knees and the arms at the elbows and things like that), you need a light source. Actually, this is usually better to decide first.

When it's sunny outside, I like to do mine outside because it makes the background VERY bright. The drawback is that it also produces a little shadowing along one side. Here is an example of a picture I took on posterboard in direct sunlight:

Notice the very bright, almost invisible background that lets you focus on the dress. Also notice the shadowing resulting from the gathers on the dress. The is especially a problem on clothes that have pleats or gathers (so they don't lie flat) or that are poplin or some other woven fabric which tends to wrinkle up a bit. Compare that to this picture that I took on the same white posterboard at the same time:

The shirt and tights are knit and the jumper is denim and flat, so there is very little shadowing in the picture despite the fact that it was taken in direct sunlight. Sometimes you will have to take pictures of something white (unless you strenuously avoid white clothing!).

I have had NO luck taking pics of white clothes on a white background, so I usually switch to sky blue posterboard. The example below was taken in direct sunlight also at the same time as the other two pics:

Since it is sky color, it still sort of retains that floating feel to it, which I like. I live in Oregon where it rains most of the year, so I can only take direct sunlight pics in the summer time. Usually I need to take pics inside or in cloudy conditions.

Taking pics on a bright day, even though it may be cloudy is still a great option and can often produce better pics than direct sunlight because the lighting is bright but diffused, which means no shadows (doesn't that sound like I know what I'm talking about? Can you tell my wonderful hubby is a great photographer? I knew exactly nothing about photography when we got married so it's all his fault!).

This is the same as when you are taking pictures of your kids. In bright sunlight you get shadows of their noses and chins, but in overcast conditions you still have the beautiful natural light without the wierd shadows. Much nicer!

TAKING PICS INSIDE

Last option: indoors. Indoor lighting is a little trickier because it's hard to get enough light and you have to make sure the light is the right color. Do you remember the old commercials for the Reveal light bulbs? You know, the ones with the yellow baby and then they put the Reveal bulb on and she brightens up to the right color?

This shift, while usually corrected for by our eyes, is very noticeable to the camera and will skew your colors terribly. How do you get around this? There are a couple ways, and a combination often works well.

First, to get as much of the natural lighting (natural lighting is just a fancy way of saying outdoor lighting) as you can, you will want to pull your background as close to a window as possible.

Actually before you do that, take a quick walk around your house and find the room that is the brightest and put your background by a window in that room. For some people, that will take care of it. If you live in Alaska and it's pitch black, probably won't help much at all!

What I do in the winter is put my table by the window and then fill in the rest with 100 watt Reveal bulbs and a floodlight my hubby bought to take indoor pics of the kids with. I have a stand light that holds three bulbs and the Reveal bulbs go there (so I don't have the yellow cast to the pics).

You will need to do some experimenting to find what works well for you and some good photo editing software to crop, brighten up, and color-adjust your pictures is really an absolute necessity. Your pictures shouldn't be any larger than about 400 pixels wide or they will be too large to easily view in many browsers.

Jasc PaintShop Pro 8 is out now and that's a pretty good, inexpensive option for tweaking your raw pictures into something really attractive. You can pick up on Amazon for about $50 or at Costco for about $40.

So, that's the basic primer on getting snazzy pictures in your auctions. You remember the old saying about how much a picture is worth compared to words, right? That's especially true on eBay because half the time people go look at something else if they don't like the picture.