A photo discovery

M and I have been having some mild friction lately over item photos in the Ballet Llama shop. See, some of the items we've been listing? Hyper-mini:

And unfortunately, at a large size, the details that are exquisite in person (seriously; her tiny fairy doors are out of this world) become a little blobby and odd.  The ones with parallel or concentric details are worst for it, but the photo layout on Etsy requires them to be blown up to about five times actual size, unless I take a mediocre distance shot, and every crumb of clay is blindingly obvious.  Furthermore, the photos, if cropped to squares, fill the entire screen and can't be seen simultaneously with the text.  (Have I mentioned I miss the narrower, older layout?)

In this listing, you can see where I've been doing some experimenting, and at last I think I've found the key.  In Picasa, I crop to 170x135 pixels, then export in full quality at 570 pixels.  The last photo in the bracelet linked above shows the result.

It's still mildly problematic in terms of the item photo being seen at a size you'd need Super Magnifiable Vision to see in person, but the cropping can center and emphasize the item without making it quite such a large percentage of the image area.

So, success!  Now back to trying to work out a good way to freeze bolting cilantro.