This tutorial will show you how to use your thumbnail view to position your shot in Etsy. So you can obtain the correct photo size in the Etsy thumbnail and product listing view.
PDF version here (2.4 mb) and youtube video tutorial available at the end of this post.
01. In Photoshop create a new document
02. Then add the dimensions below of 170×135 pixels at 72 dpi ( This is Etsy’s thumbnail size).
03. You should get a page like below and use the corner below to scale out document bounds
04. So you see something more like this now:
05. Now go to Image>Image Size
06. Now type in the width 570 (do not change height) and press ok. This is the maximum width for an image on your listing page on Etsy (without user needing to zoom).
07. Now open up the image that you want to upload to Etsy, and select the whole image so you can copy it over to the newly resized thumbnail image.
To “select all” go> command + a (mac) ctrl +a (pc) on keyboard.
08. Once you have done that, copy item.
09. Then jump back to your resized thumbnail document (like below)
10. Now paste your item you just copied into the document
11. Your item should now be in the document like so.
The image at the moment isn’t positioned that great, so lets fix that up a little.
So really we first want to position the image in the area below, so it sits nicely in the frame. Whatever you see here, is what you will see in thumbnail view on your Etsy shop page.
12. So now get the direct selection tool (situated in the tool palette as below) and now you can move the image on the screen, by hovering on the image, and then dragging the image into place (remember this just for thumbnail view).
13. So I positioned my element like so. Now you could just save the image out as is, but this is how the image will look in both thumbnail and item page.
14. Note: This following steps is if your image needs to be scaled down width wise within the document…if you do not need this, then skip to Step 18.
Now your image width may be quite bigger than the canvas size, if so you may need to do the following steps and scale the image down with the scale tool. By going Edit>Transform>Scale
15. Now scale your image down
16. If you can’t see enough of the document area, follow the instructions below.
17. My result so far is this image (below), so again I could save this out at this size, and this is exactly how it would appear in both thumbnail view and item listing page. However I want a to see as much of my image as I can. So I am going to us the ‘canvas size option’ to increase my document size. I am going to let Photoshop calculate how much I need on both on the top and bottom of my image. There’s a ‘bit of trial and error’ involved as each image height is different, so you may need to undo a couple of ‘undo’…lets give it a go.
18. So go to Image>Canvas Size
19. Now select percent from the dropdown
20. Just change the height in the % not width, remember this is the trial and error part. I am starting off with 200% but may have to undo my selection when I see the result
21. Result on first attempt I could save out as is, and the thumbnail will be as on Step 17 but on item page there will be white space above and below image.
22. So I am going to ‘undo’ command + z (mac) ctrl + z (pc) and try step 18 again with a smaller % maybe 173% instead. Repeat until you find a close enough crop, without too much white space above your image.
This was my final result, so I still had to have a bit of negative white space above the image, but this will ensure I will have a nice cropped image on my shop front. So there’s a little bit of a compromise.
22. Then all you need to go and do is >file>save for the web
I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Good-luck Etsy croppers :)
PDF version here (2.4 mb)
and Video Tutorial Version (best viewed in full screen HD on youtube).
Etsy Video Tutorial Resizing Shop Images
Note you can use this image resizing principle for any shop/marketplace. All you need to know is the thumbnail size of the shop and the max width on the item on the ‘item page’.
