eBay Hacks

Create a Photo Collage

Combine multiple photos into a single image for convenience.

When you choose to [Hack #59], eBay allows you to specify only a single image URL to appear beneath your auction description. If you have any additional photos, you’ll have to include them directly in the description with HTML, using any of several different methods described elsewhere in this chapter. But you also have the option of combining all your photos into a single image file, thus completely eliminating the need to use thumbnails or a photo album to organize multiple pictures.

A single collage of your photos is easy to build, and ultimately requires less work to insert into your auctions. It also gives you fuller control over the presentation of your photos, allowing you to easily emphasize the most important pictures.

You don’t have to host your own photos to take advantage of this hack. However, if you use eBay’s Picture Services to host your photos, you’ll be limited to their cramped 400 × 300 standard size, which is really too small for a photo collage. And while the “supersize” option would indeed remedy this, it will end up costing more than hosting multiple photos separately.

To build a collage, start with the most prominent photo of your item, properly cropped and resized, as explained at the beginning of this chapter. Then, use your image editor to increase the canvas size to accommodate additional photos. Most users are more accustomed to scrolling web pages up and down, ...