BIG, BIG Photos ...

Yes! You can have larger photos in your guide!

Using the Guide Image Uploader

The Guide editor has an image uploader that automatically resamples and shrinks your uploaded images to fit in a 200x200 area. If your images are smaller than 200, the Guide editor will show them at true size. This 100x75 thumbnail image was uploaded and displayed at true size. Next to it is the same image stretched larger by using the corner pullers. Notice that stretching an image larger doesn't look very good, but pulling it smaller can be useful. Caveat! There is an issue with stretching - read on.

There is a one-time only opportunity to stretch an image by using the corner pullers IF you are using Internet Explorer as your browser when editing. After you have stretched the image once, and then previewed, you can NOT return and resize the image again, or an error message will display and your only recourse is to delete the image and upload again.

Stacking Photos to Build a Larger image

If only a few images are needed in your guide, one neat trick is to cut a large photo into smaller segments and upload each segment as a new image. The images can be stacked or tiled together to create the larger image that is needed. An example of such an image, that has been concatenated across the page, is shown below. If you slowly drag your cursor across the image, you will see that it is two images.

(image courtesy merrygocats )

There IS another way to include larger photos.

Using Other eBay Picture Hosting

Your guide images must be hosted on eBay. They can be placed on eBay through the Guide uploader, through eBay's Picture Manager, or through the eBay Picture Service (EPS) auction image uploader.

• The free Guide images uploaded through the guide editor will remain on eBay's servers until you delete them from your guide. When you upload them, they will be resampled to a maximum of 200 pixels wide or tall.
  

• Your Picture Manager subscription photos can be whatever size you determine, and you must maintain them in your account for them to continue to show in the guide.
  

• Auction Photos, uploaded to EPS with your auction, will only remain for the duration of the auction hosting (90 days) and can be any size within eBay's limitations.
  

• The About ME page uploader could also be used as a free source of larger images up to 400 pixels wide or tall, but only two photos are allowed there; and they must remain on your ME page to display in your guide.

The Technique - Internet Explorer/FireFox/Netscape

1. Isolate the photo: Paste the URL for your Picture Manager image into the address line of an empty Internet Explorer browser window and view the standalone image. This doesn't work in either Firefox or Netscape because they both add an "alt" tag to the standalone image, which triggers an error message when saving the guide.
   
   If you have FireFox/Netscape, then view the Picture Manager image within a web page, not as a standalone image. That webpage can be an auction or ME page, or one of the practice boards can be used.
   
   
2. Copy the image: In Internet Explorer: Simply right-click-Copy the image. There is no need to highlight the image.
   
   The Firefox/Netscape copy method is to drag your cursor over the image to highlight it and use the toolbar Edit menu to copy it. Stay very close to the image so that no other content is included in the highlighted area.
   
   
3. Paste:Click your cursor into the Editor page where the image is to appear. It works best when there is already some text on the page. You may paste the copied image from Internet Explorer using right-click-Paste and from Firefox/Netscape using the Edit-menu-Paste.

Other Resources

Offline Cheat Sheet

Alternatively, if you are very comfortable with HTML, you might want to use the offline editing method described in my cheat-sheet guide. In the cheat sheet, I describe how to write Guide HTML - that is where the image would be added - and then describe how to view the page in a browser window and copy/paste the pretty page results (not the code) back into the Guide Editor.

Cheat Sheet for Writing your eBay Guide Offline

The Cheat Sheet describes how to get longer link text (like the one just above), larger images (as shown on this page), image links (like the hyperlinked photo below), and a few more formatting options (for users proficient in HTML and CSS).

Please see my other guides for Auction Template help, Page Design Basics, and useful tidbits:

Other helpful editing guides by worldfotos, an eBay employee:

The About ME page design series:

Auction Template Help:

eBay Guide Help:

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