Taking Listing Photos using Mobile App // Phone Camera is impossible after Update.
Taking Listing Photos using Mobile App // Phone Camera is impossible after Update.
Well, the newest "update" to the Camera Functions when using the mobile eBay app is absolutely dreadful, and more or less un-usable. There seems to be a new "shadow box" or Semi-Translucent bars both above and below the Main Focus "Square" as I'll call it. Lets go over this further.
The Semi-Translucent bars, which I can only imagine, were designed to help new sellers take easier, more focused, and centered photos of their items during the listing process. However, for 100% of all existing sellers who use mobile, this is useless. Anyone with a few sales under their belt have mastered their own mobile device and have no issues taking photos. Many also develop a mastery over their photo taking process, and are able to quickly take all angles of photos required quickly, and easily. I.E. Front, side to side, top, down, under, turn item 90 degrees, repeat 3x times, final frontal shot. BAM. Done. This process has been absolutely wrecked now.
These "shadow bars" don't actually auto crop anything, like you would think. Your final picture still has the entire Frame as the photo. These "shadow bars" also make it near impossible to actually see the thing your trying to take a picture of. So in order to take a full photo of the item and have it come out "correctly", you will have the top 20% of the item, and the bottom 20% of the item completely obscured by the "semi-transparent" bars....and now your only guessing what the best angle should be, because your Depth of Field is completely thrown off track.
Now, to compensate, you would say, well, just keep the item your taking a photo of within the "shadow box of doom", uh, semi-transparent bars. Ok, sure, now your photo is completely lost because your 3 feet away from the thing! There is no way your taking detailed shots of items from 3 feet away. Your resolution has just been obliterated. You might say, well, just zoom in to compensate! Ok, sure, now the item I am taking photos of consists of 3 mega pixels and looks like 1997.
Now, the most intriguing feature of the "shadow box" is that there is a new button. When you click this button it adjusts the dimensions of said "shadow box". Ok, great. However it doesn't actually do anything? Your intuition would lead you to expect it to format your photos in landscape or portrait mode. But, no. No it doesn't do anything at all. It literally just makes the "SHADOW BOX" BIGGER or smaller. It doesn't zoom in OR out! Ok.
Furthermore, when taking photos, whether your within the "shadow box" or not, your photos have a completely random outcome of "centering" I.E. Your photo will be cropped to the left or right, and/or pushing your item your taking a photo of, thus causing it to be cut off on one side, moved over, etc. It feels like the eBay app is using A.I. to auto center//adjust my photos on the fly or something, all in the name of making it easier to onboard new users and take the pain and misery out of taking photos, I guess? This could be just a glitch, and I am NOT saying A.I. IS for sure being used here, but I honestly have no idea what is going on with that. Seriously. No idea.
My current solution? Take photos of my item with my phone camera by itself before creating my new listing (or during) then upload to the listing when I'm creating it. Well, I don't want to do that. It's an extra step I don't need to take. I now have to click up to 24 extra times to select those photos and upload. This is a pain. And no, I'm not going to take photos with a Digital Camera, upload them to the cloud // hardrive //wifi etc because its not the early 2000's.
So, in conclusion, this is terrible. Everyone knows eBay listing is a numbers game. Faster listing is faster money. Period. It was working just fine before this. If we could get the old Camera System back that would be great.
Easter Egg: Why does the Camera feature when taking photos in the app now have the option to click the "selfie mode" icon"?! (The camera reverse button). I would like to ask eBay when in the world would it be appropriate for me to take a photo of me mean mugging the camera, and include it in my listings? I'm just at a complete loss, and so are the items I'm trying to take photos of.
Thanks.
theshive
·5 months agoToday it seems as if the camera is back to how it was. Haven't found any word from eBay or any news, but... Thanks to whoever is responsible!
brickbonestoys
·5 months agoI find this new update to be horrible. I had finished three listings before I noticed the changes to the camera app, and had to go back and crop every photo because of the increased background area. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would think this update is any kind of improvement. I have currently gone back to taking pics with my phones camera, instead of the ebay app, and then uploading them. This is of course more time consuming than before, but less so than having to crop every photo because of the recent app update.
fabrics24
·5 months agoHoo boy; not looking forward to returning to this when I start making fresh listings. Here I was hoping to sell what I had and get back to taking photos with the phone, saving drafts, and then completing them on the CPU. I might need to start emailing them to myself again, all for a couple of photos per listing DX
I'll figure it out, but dang, that's annoying. Thanks for the heads up, at least!
onefootflipper
·5 months agoI just plug the phone in via usb. However I have a phone dedicated just to photos and I cut and paste them off the phone onto my PC, so it is constantly empty. It only has the last photo session on it and nothing else. So it loads up super fast. If you are using your regular phone that you store photos on then I imagine you have to look at it in preview mode instead of just the filename list and that slows it way down.
fm2000
·5 months agoIf you don't mind me asking, how do you transfer your photos from the iPhone to your computer? I recently retired my DSL (literally ground down the gears in the lens from 12 years of use) and bought a super cheap used iPhone just for photos. I used to cut and paste off the camera but the iPhone is extremely finicky, takes forever to just load up a list of files in Windows explorer and I can't delete the photos from my PC at all. It is a trillion times faster than my old DSLR, photos are overall ok but leave a blueish cast to the white backgrounds sometimes.
I am 100% on desktop (3 monitors too) except for comps while sourcing. I wish I could being a laptop with me, what I can enter and do in a flash touch typing with 10 fingers and using keyboard shortcuts is painfully slow to do with a phone.
theshive
·5 months agoCertainly did not intend to start a conversation about selling practices and technical how-ya-do. However anyone does their listing, at least 3 people in this thread have valid complaints about the camera feature of the app. If you don't have constructive tips or work for eBay, your commentary isn't necessary.
Thanks!
sailinship
·5 months agoIf I'm using my Samsung S9 FE, this is exactly what I get.
If I use my Samsung S25 fe phone, it does something different. With the phone, even though I center the item in the screen, filling it to both edges, the photo will add a large amount of space all around the item. So much that I have to edit. I see the image on my screen before I take it with the item up close and personal, but the image comes out with it much smaller. Weird.
For now I'll have to take images and load them from my phone to the listings saved in my drafts. It's not that much different I guess, but it would be nice if this bug was fixed. It was not like this until that recent bugaboo ebay had. My listing app camera worked perfectly until then.
One other thing that is new. The on screen shutter button for the camera use to only show up on the two short sides, it would flip back and forth between them. Now it will end up on any of the four sides, and there is no way to shut that off, which I would very much like to do, since a slight shift in angle makes it switch sides.
onefootflipper
·5 months agoList on a computer. Almost no high volume pro sellers list on their phone. I could not even imagine what a nightmare that would be.
shippedmypants
OP5 months ago"List on a computer."
I do use a computer to augment my listing process. Also, there is absolutely no way to properly use the eBay Seller Hub and countless other crucial advanced features WITHOUT a computer / laptop. I have an entire Mini Studio / Office suite in my home with a Computer, multi screens, duplicate mobile phones strictly for eBay usage, etc. My Favorite mobile device by far is the Samsung Note 10 +, with it's excellent battery life, powerful CPU, and amazing camera. It also doesn't have much preinstalled bloatware, nor any "A.I" features which cause many modern devices to be.....awful. Oh, and it's dirt cheap, which is right up my alley!
Almost no high volume pro sellers list on their phone.
Not sure what being a high, medium, or low volume seller has to do with eBay updating their Mobile App Camera feature(s) and making it demonstrably worse in all aspects. Sort of feels like a dig. Well, I'm not sure where I stand on the eBay totem pole of sales volume, but, my partner and I have a combined total of over 1,000 sales across 2 eBay stores. This does not include other selling platforms, FB marketplace, Craigslist, Yard Sales, or other In-person word of mouth transactions. We have day jobs as well, but we have been dedicating more and more time over the past 2 years roughly, where most of our transactions have occurred. I would love to dedicate even more time to eBay, if I had a functional eBay App camera system to work with.
onefootflipper
·5 months agoSorry, this is basically my default answer to anyone bringing up problems listing using the ebay app.
I have a youtube channel where I do instructional ebay content and most of the people who contact me struggling with full time ebay are not only listing on their phone, but trying to manage their account on a phone as well. Everything takes much longer and it is near impossible to properly research prices and such while listing on a phone. My listing station has 3 monitors, and sometimes I wish I had a 4th.
There are about 8 different ways that I can personally make an ebay listing, PC on the ebay website, ebay phone app, ebay website on the phone, an AI listing app I have on my phone and 4 different third party listing packages I have access to. The ebay app on the phone is absolutely the worst choice out of all of them.
sailinship
·5 months agoAgreed, however, I thought we were specifically talking about the camera app. Maybe I'm wrong? I'm guessing that you use a camera, and then? Download them to your computer? How do you deal with the images?
kensgiftshop
·5 months agoI do all listing from a PC.
I'll use my phone (not the Ebay app) to take photos, then bluetooth them to my PC.
chapeau-noir
·5 months agoI'm not onefoot, but I use a camera (not a phone - my phone takes good outdoor shots but is too limited for product photography) and download the old fashioned way. After that I put the photos through post and write up the description.
Despite the fact that I use a mobile for quite a few things, listing using one, even at my low volume these days, is slow and cumbersome.
sailinship
·5 months agoI create my listings first, with the item in hand, and then save to drafts, and then add/list photos all at once using a phone or tablet. I don't have to look up comps more than once, I get familiar with the item in hand, and then all I have to do is photo, tag & bag. But, I'm not a "high volume" pro seller.
onefootflipper
·5 months agoSometimes at the Goodwill Outlet when I am checking price on something I will indeed click that "Sell one like this button and set the price and save the draft" but I rarely do even that, as I usually want to find the best possible listing to sell similar from and that takes too long from the phone.
I have an older iphone with no service and nothing installed on it that I use for photos, I take them and then plug it into my computer like any other camera. I don't use my current iphone for photos because for some reason not all the photos show up for PC transfer as soon as a take them. I could just as easily switch to a dedicated camera if one happened to fall into my lap. I also take a lot of photos with an Ipevo document camera that is hooked to my computer, way better for books, media and small items than anything hand held is.
theshive
·5 months agoI just left a message that was much less eloquent and detailed in another forum. The new camera is a nightmare. Landscape mode doesn't work, you can't get the shutter button in the lefthand in landscape. As you said, the shadowbox or whatever is ridiculous, nothing in that box shows up in pictures. Selfie mode?
Stop making things less functional when you try to make them convenient, please.