Tutorial - How to make your own ETSY shop Banner with your pictures using Picasa

A banner speaks a lot about a seller's personality and its products. Keeping it simple, tidy, and beautiful would generate more customer interest. Some people might not like to go further down when the first thing they see in your shop doesn’t look very inviting. So, without any further delay, lets make a simple shop banner using Picasa.


Picasa is a very helpful photo editing tool that can be used very easily to make a banner. I’ll try to explain all steps in detail, but if there is something that u don’t understand or if I have missed any step, write down in the comments below.

1. Before you start, you must have Picasa set up on your computer. You would also need your favourite picture saved on the desktop of your computer. I prefer to use a picture of my own jewelry.
2. The picture should be larger than 100 pixels high X 760 pixels wide, else the banner would come out blurred. Set your camera to high picture size before taking the pic.
3. Open the Picasa application and add your pic to picasa. For this go to file --> add file to picasa. Select your photo from the desktop. I'll be using my favorite flowers photo as an example. The pic will open in the right hand side.


4. Double click the pic to open the editing tool. Following window will open, ofcourse with your own picture :-)

5. Click on ‘CROP’ in the left hand side panel.

6. Select ‘Add Custom Aspect ratio’ from the drop down menu.

7. In the window that appears, put the dimensions as 760 x 100. For your reference, you can even put ‘ETSY BANNER’ in the name.

8. Select any one of the horizontal selections that come and click ‘Apply’.

9. If you want, you can move the selected portion up or down by holding the left key of the mouse and moving the mouse up or down.
10. Now select ‘TEXT’ from the left hand side panel.

11. Select your favourite font and font size from the drop down menu. I like to use ‘Pristina’ and font size 96. You can also do other style adjustments like Bold, Italics, Underline and alignment. You can also change text color.

12. Click anywhere on the picture and print your text there.

13. Hover your mouse over the text until u see a small hand and a circle. Hold your mouse over the arrow and you can adjust the size and location of your text by moving ur mouse. Play around with it to find your perfect selection.

14. Click on 'APPLY' to embed this text to your picture.

15. Your new shop banner is ready. Save it on desktop to upload it to your shop. For saving, click on File --> Save as . Then save it on your desktop or any other favourite location.

Yippie, you just made to your shop banner with your favourite photo and your favourite text. Upload it to your shop like any other banner.