Pictures
A key to any good listing is having good pictures. Any site that allows you to list an item will allow or even require you to provide pictures of the item. Different sites, however, will have different ways of providing pictures for listings. Some sites will host the images for you, while others may require you host the images yourself, and some sites allow both.
Regardless of how the site accepts pictures, SixBit can help you provide those pictures painlessly. To learn how to add pictures to your items, refer to Managing Pictures on an Item.
Hosting
Before buyers can see your pictures they must be "hosted" on the internet. As mentioned earlier, some sites will host your pictures for you and other sites require you to host your own pictures.
eBay allows you to choose either method. You can upload pictures to EPS (eBay Pictures Services) and they will host them for you or you can host them on your own web space through a site like www.pair.com. EPS traditionally has charged a fee for hosting your images, however, the trend at eBay has been to make images free which makes EPS a much more attractive option. If you don't have a specific need to host your own pictures and EPS pictures are free in your category, then we recommend you use EPS for your hosting.
If you host your own images, then you will need a way to upload your images to your web space. This is usually done through FTP (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is simply a standard for sending files across the internet. SixBit has FTP built into it. If you have your own FTP space, provide SixBit with the logon information for the site and SixBit can automatically upload your pictures when you submit your items. Refer to Entering a Picture Host for more information on entering your FTP settings.
Physical Storage vs. Links
Pictures can be stored in SixBit in two different ways. SixBit can either store the entire picture or only the URL link to the picture. Ideally, pictures should be stored in SixBit. This allows SixBit more control over the pictures. Pictures can be edited, deleted, or uploaded and all users sharing the database will have the same access to them. See External Picture Storage for more details on exactly how SixBit stores the pictures.
There are cases when you might want to provide only URL's to your images. For instance, if pictures are all stored for your website and they are managed from another tool or manually, you may not want to create another entire copy of them in SixBit. In this case, you could provide just the URL's to the images. SixBit will download a thumbnail into its database so pictures of the item may be seen, however, they can no longer be edited. When a listing is created, SixBit will use the URL as the link to the image. If the URL to the image ever changes, it will be up to you to change the URL in SixBit.
Editing Pictures
In addition to storing your pictures, SixBit has the ability to edit your pictures. Most of the common editing functions such as crop, rotate, color adjust, brightness, and contrast can be performed manually and in some cases automatically by SixBit. For more information about how to edit and manage your pictures, refer to Using the Picture Editor or Using the Manage Pictures Window. To learn more about automatically processing pictures, refer to Automatic Picture Processing.
Batch Entering/Changing Pictures
Pictures can be added to your items as they are created as described in Managing Pictures on an Item, however there are other times when it would be faster to enter the pictures in batches. Examples of this include being able to add the same picture to multiple items at once or the ability to automatically add pictures to an item based on its location on your hard drive. See Batch Changing Pictures for more information.