Use free tools to add a clickable image gallery to your auction.

Improve your auction with a photo click-gallery.

We will show you how to use the free version of Clic*Pic to add a click-to-enlarge photo gallery to your auction.

Requirements

You will need:

1. Windows PC with XP, Win2000, Win98, or WinME (Won't work on a Mac and Linux)
2. Download and install the Clic*Pic program 
   
3. Photos must be in a folder on your PC
4. Online hosting: A website, personal webspace from your ISP, or an image host to store your online photos.
   

The program will create these for you:

1. The HTML click-to-enlarge code for your auction.
2. Resized, cropped, and compressed photos and thumbnail images to be uploaded to your host.
   It won't hurt or modify your original photos.
   

Open the program

When you first install and open the program, it will offer you a tiny, quick tutorial. It is helpful to run through that to get familiar with the location of all the features. That tutorial can always be rerun from the Help Menu. You will also notice that there are a lot of available features during the first 30 days, but we are only going to learn those features that are available in the FREE version of Clic*Pic after the thirty day trial of extended features expires. The free version of the program never expires, and that is what we will learn here.

Choose a gallery name

When you name your gallery, a folder by that name will be created to store your photos and gallery code. That folder is where you will find them later on.

Get your photos

The "Find Photos" button will initially open your "My Pictures" folder on your computer. If your photos are stored elsewhere, then navigate to the folder where your photos are stored. Clic*Pic will remember this folder the next time you go looking for your pictures. If the picture folder fills your entire screen, then reduce it some so that you can also see the Clic*Pic screen underneath.


Drag a photo from the picture folder to one of the small picture cells on the Clic*Pic screen. Fill up to four cells with photos. The free version of Clic*Pic allows 4 photos per gallery and they will be 400x300 just like eBay's picture gallery.

Zoom and crop your photos

Now you can play with the photos in the Clic*Pic cells. The plus and minus keys on your keyboard will zoom in and out and you can use the arrow keys, or your mouse, to better position the image in the large square. Your Clic*Pic photos will be cropped to those settings (your original photos won't be touched).


You don't have to use four different photos in the gallery - you can repeat the same photo and just zoom into different areas if you wish. With a single high-quality product photo, you can give your buyers closeup shots of flaws, hallmarks, or interesting details.
 

Add the host URL

This is the tricky part for most people, since a "host URL" is often a new concept to them, so we'll skip it for now and address it later on. We can always keep remaking the gallery until we get it right.

Make the gallery and play around

This is the fun part, as you can make and remake as much as you want until your gallery looks the way you want it (you'll get a message to overwrite your previous gallery attempt, so just click "ok"). In the free version, as soon as you close out one gallery, you can't revise it, so keep playing with it until you are happy. When you click the MAKE button, your images will be processed and the Clic*Pic photos and thumbnail images will be created.

When the processing is finished, a browser window will open to display your completed gallery. Does it look OK? Does it need tweaking? You can close the browser window to expose the Clic*Pic program again. The program will be displaying the HTML code for the gallery. That is your auction code, but we'll just use the button at the bottom to close that out for now and return to the editing screen with the photos.

Now that you have a taste of the gallery making feature, you may just want to keep trying different arrangements or views. Then we'll take another look at that Host URL.

Add the real Host URL

The host is the website or image host where your online photos will be stored. The host URL will always start with "http://". If your website is called www.mywebsite.com, and you have a directory on there for your ebay items, your host URL might look like this: http://www.mywebsite.com/ebayauctions/. It will include all of the internet address right up to, but excluding, the name of the image. Changes that you make to the Host URL field will automatically be remembered the next time you open the program.

If you have used one of the free or pay image hosts from my ME page, your Host URL might also include your username for that site. The image host should provide you with the correct Host URL in your account managment area or in the acknowledgement email. If you need help finding or constructing the Host URL, we can always help you on the Photos/HTML forum.

Make the real gallery

Once you have added the correct Host URL, you will need to remake the gallery to get that web address into the code. You will get the usual browser preview, which you can close to expose the code. That is the code to copy into your auction or listing template. You can do that now or later, since that code will be saved in a text file in your gallery folder.

Upload photos

The photos are stored in the gallery folder on your computer, but now you will need to upload them to your image host. You can click on the gallery folder name on the ClicPic screen and "Look at folder contents" to find the photos. There will be two photos for each picture (a "lg_" and "sm_" image). User your image host's uploader to browse for those photos on your computer. The direct path to them is usually going to be C:\Program Files\ClicPic\. Be sure to upload all eight images for your four photos.

Add gallery code to Auction Page

The gallery code can be copied directly from the Clic*Pic screen or you can go into the gallery folder and open the "_web_..txt" file that contains a saved copy of the code. Copy and paste the code into the HTML tab of the listing form or Turbo Lister description page. You can flip back to the normal editing view on the listing form or in Turbo, and if you are online and your images are on your host, you should see your images appear in the gallery.

See some examples

Here are a few samples of free Clic*Pic in active auctions:
http://search-desc.ebay.com/free-ClicPic_W0QQftsZ2QQsatitleZfreeQ2dClicPic
And here are more elaborate variations of Clic*Pic galleries:
http://search-desc.ebay.com/ClicPic_W0QQftsZ2QQsatitleZClicPic

 

Visit my ME page for Free Tools and Resources for Better Auctions
Copyright © 2005-2007 shipscript
More Auction Template Help Guides:
• How to select a Template
• Mini-Templettes for Auction Inserts
• The 10 Design Basics (series)
• Adding Sound to your Auction
• Adding Auction Backgrounds
• Make a Seamless Background Tile
• JPG or GIF image formats - which should I use?
• Web-Size your Photos using Email or Paint