About product images

Product images are an important part of displaying products in your eStore. Customers view product images in two ways. When customers browse through a department, they see a series of small (thumbnail) images. When customers click on a product, they see a large image of only that product.

You can upload any digital image stored in JPG (JPEG) or GIF format, which are standard image formats for Web delivery.

GIF format files have limited capability to handle colour, so are best used for black-and-white photos or line drawings.
JPG format files work better for colour photos, particularly when the photos have lots of colour depth. Skin tones, for example, are best shown in JPG format.

Retaining image quality for large images

JPG images can be compressed to take up less computer space. The more you compress a file, the less depth you keep, and the photos can begin to look ugly. To get the best results with your images, set your camera to the highest quality. You can always compress your images later, but you can't restore lost detail and quality after the fact.

Compressing images for thumbnails

Using thumbnail images on your department pages loads your pages faster. Customers appreciate the faster loading time, and are less likely to leave because of a slow-loading page. To use thumbnails, copy the original image and, in image editing software such as Microsoft Paint, reduce the size of your image and save it. This creates a smaller, faster-loading version. Also, free software for creating thumbnails is available on the Internet.