Photoshopped Pics not matching items sold

This is an interisting development, as photoshopping images in SL to make the appearence nicer becomes more and more popular (especialy with ads), and how it presents problems in other situations, when the "old style" of just slappin on a screenshot may have presented a more realistic view of the product.

I think untill we have NPC's that can display clothing, or some "try" feature built into SL, theres no real way of knowing what you see is what you're going to get.

Video cards and settings should not matter much for clothing, while *your* clothing may look different at first, you could always up the same settings and get the same quality, this is not the fault of the designer/seller. High end graphics can not hide seams and flaws (unless photoshoped out ).

Remember video cards / lighting could affect pics, too.

I haven't really had a problem with a Photoshopped picture being misleading on a box... maybe I just haven't noticed. Once I had an item that didn't match, but that was an oversight and had nothing to do with how the picture was done.... it had the wrong item in the box. Quick IM to the seller, and everything was straightened out, and she was happy because she was able to fix the error before anyone else bought one.

What bugs me is the people that put no effort in to the picture at all. Taking a picture of dark clothing against a dark background in the dark is just not a good idea... I don't understand why this happens, when everyone can make the sun come up on command (or should be able to if they ask around), and a white background can be rezzed with ridiculous ease. I've been interested in items, but not bought them because the picture was just too poor to tell if it was worth it... and it leaves me with the feeling that, if the seller can't be bothered to make a clear display of their wares, why should I be bothered to buy them?

For my box photos, I take a picture from the front, one from the back, and save both to disc. In GIMP, I take out the background, slap them on a white background, (or whatever color will contrast nicely) resize them to fit the 256 canvas, and slap my LR logo on them. That's the entirety of it. No lighting changes, no special effects, no smoke and mirrors. Like you, I feel that touching up the clothing itself would be false advertisement, and so is choosing poses and angles to deliberately hide mistakes.

Personally, I'd rather show the item as clearly and honestly as I can, and keep my repeat customers. I don't charge enough to be able to ignore repeat business, bad word of mouth, and crappy customer service. I rely on the customer's satisfaction to keep me in upload money, and trying to pull one over on them is not going to accomplish that.

Can I see your box photos? Who else has photos of their box?

You'll have to purchase old issues of Erogenous Zone for that.

LOL I can so relate to this Chip

I will often do a heavily photoshopped ad to post here in the forums, but generally leave the actual boxes that the items are displayed in untouched. Well, I cut out the images and paste them on a white background usually. Sometimes a different background, but the clothing itself stays unaltered.

Here's an example of an ad:




But the actual box on the wall in my store looks like this:



Sorry for the ginormous pictures.

I don't see anything wrong with making a pretty looking advertisement, but I agree that heavily enhanced item images are misleading. Doing that sort of thing just sets you up for disappointment, imo. Of course there are a handful of designers who I've bought from in the past that I trust will put out quality merchandise regardless of how enhanced or plain their item picture is.

Actually Star, I think the clothing looks totally different..
I guess I dont understand why people enhace the pics of the clothing in an ad... why not make it look pretty and fancy and leave the actual product untouched, as in Picture 2

Well, yes, it does. That was sort of my point. The first picture is a glammed up photo that is used on forum advertisements only. The second picture shows the clothing and model completely unaltered. The second photo is the one that I use on the actual box that is displayed in my store, the contents of which are identical to what is pictured.

Unless you meant you think the second photo looks different than the actual clothing. To which I can only say .

Edit: (You edited while I was typing.)

I guess the reason that I personally make the ad like in the first one is because I have fun doing so.

I noted that trying to take a pic of my rings produces a "No Bling" affect whereas the ring DOES have Bling, very frustrating so yes i have on occassion had to add the "Bling Effect" to get my point across, and yes the ring's bling works jsut fine alone, just not when taking a pic of it.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents here and mention that not photos of products at Sci Fi Supplies are ever retouched. What you see pictured on the boxes are exactly what the items look like on my screen. I do, however almost always manufacture the backgrounds pictured behind the products in Photoshop. For example, my Klingon Warrior avatar is pictured standing in the great hall of a Klingon building with a few flags and artifacts on the walls. The building does not exist in SL. I added it to the picture simply to provide an apropriate visual environment for the character-based avatar which is the item for sale.

Using Photoshop to create a compelling advertisement for a product is great, but no seller should ever change the appearance of the product itself. That's just wrong, and if it is going on, then you as the customer should NEVER just keep that to yourself. Contact the seller and express your opinion. If he/she has any business sense whatsoever, they will offer a refund or an exchange. The customer is always right, afterall. If they are uncooperative however, then spread the word to your friends not to shop with them (just like you do in RL). Those merchants with good business ethics will stay in business for a long time; those without them will perish sooner or later when their lack of scruples catches up with them (and it always does).

Here are two examples of what I do, just posting the links where I had posted in classifieds previously. Lighting is used to bring out detail and a shadow to seperate from the white background, that's all I do. Nothing on the clothing is masked or changed.

http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7820

http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7360

Starley and Torrid... beautiful work! I'm glad this topic came up because I've always felt like a slacker when comparing my ads and boxes to yours. The box and pics for the forum are always the very last thing I do and it's usually something like "oh crap, I have to do the box now!" hehe

That's all well and good, and the majority of designers are very good about replacing or refunding if not right. However when you take pics of a particular problem with a garment and insert them into a notecard detailing the fault, and get ignored totally - including follow up IMs, that name just gets added to my *persons to avoid* list.

As someone said earlier, a happy customer tells 5 people, an unhappy one tells everyone they know.

Like I said though, the majority are excellent and really value their customers, and these are the people I buy from.

Some examples of images before and after PS work. The first image is the avatars on background with no post processing. Second pic is avatars with a blurred greyscale screen layer applied to boost the lighting, and some darkening of the background to make them blend in better.
Pre-photoshop and Post-photoshop
The purpose of the post process done on these images is to: make composited avatars blend in better with the background, brighten the image (snapshots often come out dark or flat), and also because it looks nice and is fun to do.
It is never, at least in my case, used to fix a flaw that exists in the garment.
In fact, the process I use on my box images doesnt ever involve a brush ever touching the image at all.

While agreeing that attempting to cover up flaws that the designer knows exist rather than just fixing them is not right, i would suggest that that isnt what designers are up to by default when they do post work on thier displays. I would say its more of a case of its fun to do, and adds a nice uniform look to one's shop, and often is neccesary at least to some degree when you are compositing multiple avatars into a single image.
Nothing nefarious about it, we just want it to look nice.

That said, if the reality of a garment ever fails to match your expectations of it, you should always request a return.

Shad, Crim and I at Jade Wolf all use the same method to make our box's.

We use a backdrop facing the sun in full daylight. Take that pic to disk and then overlay it with our store as well as personal logos.

There is no retouching of the photo at all and we use the natural game lighting to enhance them as we feel this is the way they will be seen ingame.

We do use poses off and on but that is to add some flair so it's not boring to see the same pose on every box as you browse. The poses we use are chosin for the fact they do not warp or change the look of the garment.

I agree with what most designers have stated here, if you find one of my clothing items lacking, I hope you do IM me and I WILL make it right.

Also a note about seams, I do have some items that I still sell from way back because they have continued to be great sellers. I have noticed on occasion after an update that the seams on an item or two may be a little off. So I do try to check what I have out for sale off and on and fix any issues.

I have found that even unretouched images of avatars can be somewhat misleading when factors like local lighting & bump maps are considered, not to mention client end monitor and software settings.

I have ads in my store that are obviously not pictures from SL, but are used to convey a mood or message. Other ads are pictures of my creations (unretouched with the expection of background placement), but they are largely informational and meant as suppliments to demo textures of my products.

I prefer to deal with demo textures. That way there is no question as to what the texture looks like when applied to many different looking avatars, and option settings. A while back I had pushed for a new feature (in that forum) that would allow any texture to to sampled similar to the way objects can through the "Temp on Rez" feature. It would be beneficial to not have to rely on snapshots and screen captures to demostrate our products. So far, the best alternative for me is to create a separate demo version of each texture. Being much less prolific than most you, I can do this fairly easily, but I wince when I think of all you clothing designers out there having to create demo textures!

With things like shoes, it can be tricky. I have shiny enabled but alot of new players don't even know about shiny. They buy their shoes and unlike the picture in the store, they are a flat, dull black until they IM me and I tell them how to turn it on.

It also comes down to what video card you are using. When I play SL on my pc, I can't see the shinyness, since it is not enabled and can't be turned on while on my pc. The other day I decided to use my boyfriend's pc to see if his video card has the capacity to see the shinyness, and as I expected his pc can. Imagine my surprise to see that many of my furniture was shiny... in fact it was way too shiny.
Needless to say, I edited my build on his pc so it wouldn't annoy/blind anyone, including myself.

(funny, I just posted a thingy about shiny in the technical section.)

Most everything has been said, but this thread is a compelling one.

I'm one of those "low end" users, I cannot see shiny and bumpy and if I run local lighting and many of the bells and whistle stuff I grind to a complete halt.

That being said, when I take the pics for my designs I have this fear that what I see is TOTALLY different from what someone else is going to see when they buy my stuff and wear it.

Been designing and selling for around 8 months or so, and I recently a few months ago started using photoshop to design things. Like many others who have posted here, to get my product pics I do the following.

Have the model (or sometimes myself) stand in front of white back drop facing the sun and I snap away. I save to disk, then crop resize in PS and stick the best front and back shots together on one pic, upload it and put it on the box.

I'm still learning PS, and if I goof up a seam or something - it ain't going out for sale. But if I HAVE goofered something thats out there - always always let me know

Most designers are happy to help you if you have a problem with their stuff. The other day I had one of my customers IM me that she wanted to return a gown - it ended up not being what she wanted. I happily refunded her on the return. There was also a weird SL glitch that had rendered some clothing (mine and another designers) sort of seethru-ish and it picked up whatever background you were standing in front of.

The customer contacted me, we looked at the items together - it was sorta fun freaky to see this effect, had a few chuckles, and I replaced the clothing - the effect didn't seem to be rendering from items I had in my inventory thank goodness - and we both were satisfied.

I know I'd MUCH rather hear from someone if there is a problem, then not know.

So this is the new thing to gripe about?

This is what I do that is "photoshoppy."









I don't think my images or the images that were posted here by other designers are deceiving. I take pictures showing the alphas battling with one another, where the prim meets the AV hair. And also show prims sticking out and everything. I don't get that if I just leave the pic as is. I've had newbies buy my hair assuming it was the hair all our AV's came with. I so I try to provide every opportunity for the customer to see what the product is and how they use it without bending over and actually giving them the thing.

And if it's a real photoshopped pic you want to see, then here's one I have. I doubt any of the pictures posted here have gone thru this.

Sorry for the momentary hijack:

Lash, I have been looking for a pose exactly like that! Can you IM me or otherwise let me know whence it came?

Ok back on topic:

Chip, thanks for the kind words. You are one of the people I think we all know we can depend on for quality items regardless of postwork.

So in summation:

1. Photoshop is fun.
2. If you are unhappy with a purchase, IM the creator.
3. If the creator is a turd, tell your friends.
4. Starley had too much wine with dinner.
5. Chip is the r0xx0r!

Let the debate continue....