UPDATE: Scroll to the bottom to learn how to deal with Facebook’s pesky cropping problem!

Every week in the cTailers Lounge, we invite a guest to answer group members’ questions about comment selling and comment retail (c-Tail). Last week, our resident Head of Customer Success who formerly worked for Photojojo, Jules Faas, gave us her expert advice on how to take excellent product photos. In case you missed it, here are her top tips for success!

Find a good source of lighting.  “I can’t stress the importance of good lighting enough,” says Jules. “Either with a light box or natural lighting, you need to get your lighting right before you do anything else. What you’re looking for is: bright enough to not need a flash (using light box lights is a-ok, though), and even lighting so you don’t have harsh shadows.” Setting up a home studio is easy and helps you achieve a professional look. For the photo below, Jules taped a piece of white paper to an ice chest near a window. You can also make your own light box for under $25!

iPhone and Android apps do wonders for photo editing. To create the photo below, Jules used Snapseed to adjust the contrast, brightness, and sharpness–all of which are crucial for web publishing. Then, using Diptic, she pieced two images together and used Over to add a line of evocative text. If you want to add more than one line, just save the photo and bring it up again in the app.

Place eye-catching text over photos. With the Facebook News Feed inundated with images, the only way to slow down a speed-scroller is to present interesting photos that have something to say (literally). When that text is about a giveaway, you’ve earned bonus points. The key here is engagement–Facebook Insights proves that bright, clean images with text invite fan interaction.

Pick a backdrop that’s interesting or unobtrustive–and be consistent about it. After lighting, a good background is the second most important aspect of your product photo. Giving thought to the backdrop will also help with your store branding–what is the “feel” of your Facebook store?

When possible, use a model to demonstrate fit. “Models are so, so important when your customers have to base their purchase off of photos,” stresses Jules. “They need to see how the product fits on a human, how the fabric falls, so they can picture themselves wearing the item.” For jewelry, modeling is less important, but it may be a good idea to offer styling tips through an accessorized model. Jules recommends creating a photo collage with close-ups of the jewelry through a mobile app, photo editing software, or a website like Fotor.

Pay attention to size and resolution. Nothing turns away customers faster than an unflattering product photo. To avoid blurriness or pixelation, pay attention to resolution–the number of pixels per inch should be high enough for crisp photos, but not so high that it makes uploading to Facebook a pain. 72 PPI is a good rule of thumb. Check out this size guide for Facebook photos–it’ll help you avoid posting photos that are too small and become distorted as a result. Also, don’t zoom in! You can crop your photo later, but using the zoom function will lower image quality.

Want to learn more? Jules’ brilliant tips and tricks are still available to view, comment on, and share in our cTailers Lounge. Join the group to view the discussion and participate in future Q&As every Wednesday at 2 PM CST.

Bonus: Sometimes Facebook’s size parameters publish your photos off-center. To fix that, simply click the edit icon on the top right hand corner of your post and select “Reposition Photo” from the drop-down menu. Your fans will still see the entire photo (uncropped) on their News Feeds, but how the picture appears on your Timeline is up to your maneuvers.