What's Going On With Ebay? Width Of Stamps

Now that summer is about over, I've gone back to trying to sell some duplicates on ebay. When I tried to post a scan of the stamp, I was told, "not enough detail. Picture must be wider." So I cropped it again and made it wider. Fine. But I think it ends up looking dumb, and it makes the stamp look smaller and harder to see. Also, other sellers don't appear to have this problem. Do they just ignore the ebay note? Is that what I should do? I never had this problem before.

Another oddity: A few weeks ago I posted an item. I was able to det the date and time for the sale to start and, by implication, end, and I was advised to time it to end in the evening. Recently this window is gone and the sale begins immediately. Anyone know why?

Don

I scan my stamps at 600dpi and then adjust them up or down in an old photo program I have so that they meet ebay's 1600 pixel requirement. ebay has this requirement that one side is at least 1600 pixels and I've never had any problems leaving it at that.

Adjusting image size after scanning will always result in losing image quality. The ideal method is to scan at a resolution which does not require post image processing.
I wrote this article a few weeks ago http://www.stampsmarter.com/feature..._Images.html . There is a resolution calculator at the bottom of the page.
Don

@DDREISBA, I know I'm a pain for asking, but what is "det" in your posting mean?

I have no idea what this means, looked online, could not find anything.

Stampmaster

I think that's a typo and he meant 'set'

As Don mentions, you never want to resize an image upwards, only downwards.

For ebay, I scan so that the widest dimension is 1000 pixels to 1600 pixels.

Since I always put images in the body of the listing in addition to using the uploadable image feature (the ones that show up at the top of the page in ebay's rollover image viewer), in order to make sure the body images don't expand past a device's width forcing people to scroll everywhere, in the HTML code I add a WIDTH="XX%" parameter. This automatically resizes the image upwards or downwards to fit XX% of the width of the containing object, thus making the image responsive (or at least as responsive as it can be within ebay's page code).

By starting with a high-resolution image, if the image ends up being resized in any direction, it is more likely to be reduced in scale from its original size (good) rather than enlarged (bad).

Code example:

<p><img src='www.placeyouthosttheimages.com/imagename.jpg' width='100%' alt='Description'/></p>

(note: I normally would put https colon slash slash in front of the www above, but it gets auto-mangled by the forum software even inside the code tag.)

Yes, I meant "set."

If fishing for an image to use on ebay from another ebay image listing. Get the image to its largest size on the listing before you "save image as".

This has been more help for stock mint images for coins but there are some images that a stamp seller needs at times.

If you try to save the image as at the smaller size the image will be reject for being listed.

If I want an image to be saved from my computer to another of my computers. This way to "save images as" has been very helpful as well.

Just to make sure I'm understanind correctly: You think it is ok to take images from other sellers' listings to use in your listings?

If so, that is theft, plain and simple. It isn't done.

Hopefully that is not what you meant.

John, How do you know the width in pixels of your scan?

Don

I hate to admit that I use an ancient photo program dating back to 1996 but it gives the size in various ratios and lets you change one aspect and it automatically changes the other. Pixels being one of them. Picasa does too. But I'm not sure how to manipulate the size there. Where I run into a problem always is with my Epson 3590 scanner. If I try and upload to ebay a scan directly without going thru a photo program Turbo Lister tells me that the size is wrong even though it may not be. So I've just gotten used to running every scan thru my photo program no matter what.