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When taking pictures of t-shirts, to be uploaded to a website, does it really matter if I take the images with my cell phone or with an expensive camera?
Being that the images on the website are small, does it matter if I use a camera that takes 1 MP or 12MP? If there is a need to reduce the size of the image, will something like Paint do? Am I just reducing the size of the image, or, do I also need to reduce the quality?
Yes, it does matter. You don't just want a small image on your site. You want the shopper to be able to enlarge/zoom the image so they can get a good, detailed look to it.
Do not use a camera phone, your garment will not show well. Use a high quality digital camera will proper lighting and white balance settings.
Ye, agree with Joe...you want the images to look as good as possible as that is what the customer is going to see when considering to purchase - if you have poor quality pictures your designs won't look as good and the customer won't have much confidence in your product..
Are you saying then that I should use the highest resolution camera that I can and upload that image, or , is there a "usual size" image that I should take, like 2 MP or 4MP, etc?
As far as I know there isn't a set standard, just have the quality high so that the details of your design and the quality of the fabric can be seen..you could have a smaller thumbnail which when clicked on pulls up the bigger image, this image could be any size really..our images are 860 x 560 but thats just because that size fits ok for us...try out a few different sizes until you find one that works for you and make sure that there is no skewing if you are resizing..
The higher resolution picture you take, the more options you have to present different views (close ups) of the image. There is no ideal camera resolution, whatever you have available.
The picture size will have to be optimized and reduced before you put it on your site. It would take too long to load if you had a 1 or 2 mb size file on your site.
OK, from the last posting, It sounds like I do not need (or want), to use a camera that takes 12 MP images, because I do not want an image that will take forever to upload. Excuse my ignorance here about digital photography (I used to be quite good with SLR's), but does that mean that I want a camera that takes 1 MP, or a camera that can be adjusted so that it can take an image using different selections of MP's. Whether I take an image of 1 MP, or 12MP, it sounds like I will have to reduce the size (in Paint). when I reduce the size, do I not reduce the quality of the image? As for not using a cell phone camera, (which has a size of 1 or 2 MP), the reason for this is that the regular digital cameras (non cell phone), will take better images because of color adjustment, etc? And, it sounds like I want more then one size of the image, one smaller on to catch the viewers eye, and then one larger one to give them a better\closer look at the shirt.
Posted my last reply before I saw "out da box", who says to use the higher image and then down size it. When "downsize" is mentioned, does that mean cropping the image or just reducing the number of pixels in it so that even though it is a smaller image with less pixels in it, the entire image is still there?
Posted my last reply before I saw "out da box", who says to use the higher image and then down size it. When "downsize" is mentioned, does that mean cropping the image or just reducing the number of pixels in it so that even though it is a smaller image with less pixels in it, the entire image is still there?
Downsizing can mean both things. Either making the image "physically" smaller or reducing the quality so that it loads faster in an online environment or both.
Basically what everyone is trying to say is for you to take the picture with the highest quality you have available to you. Pictures that are downsized look better when they are downsized from a high quality image. Other factors to take into account are lighting techniques and color balance but I'm sure you already know that since you're familiar with SLRs.
PS: I recommend something other than MS Paint to manipulate the images. Try out the GIMP for a great, powerful and free alternative to Photoshop. Just whatever you do don't use paint
Image size for website = ? 
Re: Image size for website = ? 
