What type of photos do you need to create and edit?

• Avatars for a your Social Media profiles?
• Photos for Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, FaceBook, and other online sharing?
• Images for your website and ecommerce store?

How much do you want to spend? Most of us would say “nothing.” Creating quality photos doesn’t require a huge capital investment. It does take a little time and creativity.

Creating Social Media Avatars & Photos

You don’t have to be a graphic artist to participate in Social Media. However, you want to use an image that represents who you are. This graphic is called your avatar. Use a graphic or photo that represents your uniqueness, your personality. Maybe it’s simply your mugshot!

• Get your own speaking avatar at voki.com.
• Create your own graphical, cartoonish avatar using Create My Picture.
• Animate yourself as a 3D talking head with Gizmoz (be ready to laugh).

I prefer the conservative approach and use my photo – and appreciate it when others do the same. (It’s easier to meet people at conferences!) I use a variation of the same picture shown right.

Sizes for avatars range from 48×48 pixels to 100×100 pixels. Photo editing tools enable you to resize and crop your image. You may want to cut out the background, colorize it, or make it black and white. Here are two free tools for photo editing and avatar creating:

• Picnik – Easily edit photos, online, in your browser. Their site says, “Tweak to your heart’s content.”
• Picasa – Free software download from Google in which you can edit, organize and share photos.

Picnik and Picasa are also free photo editing tools ideal for Social Media photo sharing.

• Picnik and Flickr are now integrated. Users can edit online, in Flickr, using Picnik tools on the photo page. (It’s also a great tool for taking screenshots.)
• Picasa allows you to upload to Google’s Picasa Web Albums. (It does a great job of getting rid of red-eye.)
• FotoFlexer is another free online tool for editing photos and uploading to your social spaces.

(Personal opinion about avatars: Gals, please don’t use suggestive avatars. Your image represents who you are offline and online. Unless you plan to someday work for Hugh or Hooters, your avatar can determine how a prospective employer, and the world, judges you.)

Ecommerce & Website Images

You don’t have to be a graphic artist to create quality photographs for your website. However, you do need QUALITY photos. The quality of images on an ecommerce site can make or break the experience and possibly the sale. You might want to dish out some money for a photo editing tool. You’ll save money by preparing your own product photos without paying website maintenance fees.

Prepare, touch-up and optimize quality images for your online store using Photoshop Elements, a scaled-down version of Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop Elements is less expensive, worth the money, and a great tool for ecommerce store owners.

Photoshop Elements Tutorials

Refer to these tutorials for using Photoshop Elements to flatten out the learning curve:

• Photoshop Elements Techniques – highly recommended.
• Using the Magic Wand tool to select and area to change color or cut out backgrounds from a picture.
• A listing of Photoshop Elements Tutorials, including free videos and some paid resources.
• A listing of sites with Photoshop Tips & Tricks.

Books:

• Photoshop Elements, The Missing Manual
• Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 in 24 Hours

Determine your photo editing goals. Realize you don’t have to spend a lot of money to create online photos.

• If you are simply interested in participating in Social Media, use the free photo editing tools.
• If you are an ecommerce store owner, consider Photoshop Elements.
• If you are planning to provide professional services in graphic design or photography, you’ll get the bells and whistles in Adobe Photoshop.

People do judge a book by its cover. Your avatars and your ecommerce product photos are your cover!

One more free photo editing tool – GIMP

GIMP works on all platforms (PC, Max, Linux). This free photo editing tool offers a customizable interface, photo enhancing and a lot more. Are you ready? GIMP enables you to load and save files to a Web server via FTP! That’s not all! It also allows you to compress them to save disk space (ZIP, GZ). I can’t wait to start using this. Check out the GIMP Tutorials.

Thank you, UnclePeppers.com, for sharing this tool!