Before delving into the eCommerce world, I thought shooting products was easy: “You just need to grab a camera, use a bright light, and the photos will come out okay, right?”
Any retailer that has tried DIY product photography knows this is not the case.
Product photography is more complicated than it seems. It requires the right lighting, tools, set up, and editing to make images look professional.
Luckily, nowadays, there are many affordable or even free solutions to get great photos.
Therefore, expensive equipment is not always necessary. It’s all about knowing the best practices and different steps to prep, shoot, and edit photos.
That’s what makes the difference between a poor-quality photo and a great one.
In turn, that image quality affects eCommerce conversion rates for good or bad. Use these 6 tips to enhance the look of your products.
1. Prepping Product
Why is prepping important?
Product prep is important because it helps reduce time in post-production or photo editing.
You can reduce the appearance of fingerprints, creases, folds, or other imperfections that otherwise would have to be corrected during editing.
Sometimes product imperfections can be so noticeable that they can’t be reduced even after editing. Thus, it’s important to take this step as seriously as the other steps.
Keep in mind that the camera picks up things that are unnoticeable to the naked eye.
Follow the proper prepping process
The prepping process will vary slightly according to the type of product being photographed.
Shiny, small, or reflective products will require a lot of prepping due to their reflective surfaces, which interfere with lighting.
This is usually the case with jewelry. On the other hand, less reflective and bigger products may be easier to photograph.
Let’s go over some of the most popular products and their prepping processes below:
- Clothing
- Use a steamer to straighten clothing and reduce wrinkles.
- Think about the look you’re trying to achieve. Would you like the clothes to lie flat, or create an invisible mannequin effect? To create the latter, use an invisible mannequin to reduce work in post-production.
- Have hangers, clips, or clamps handy to make any loose pieces of clothing tighter.
- Jewelry
- Use fabric gloves to handle jewelry before shooting. They will help prevent fingerprints on the jewelry.
- Polish jewelry pieces with a cloth to make them shine and reduce dust.
- Have small mirrors handy to help reflect light and make jewelry shinier.
- Use clear jewelry holders that can be easily removed in post-production. You can also use a glue gun to set rings in place and have them stand up for a beautiful shot.
- Sunglasses
- Polish them carefully and handle with gloves, following the above tips used for jewelry.
2. Setting Up the Studio & Shooting
Once you have your products prepped, it’s time to set up the studio and start shooting. As mentioned before, you don’t need expensive equipment, just the right setup!
Use a lightbox
I love using a lightbox to shoot small- to medium-sized products because it already comes with a white background and the lighting needed to take great pictures.
Most importantly, it helps light the product evenly so that no part of the product stays in the dark.
There are many affordable lightboxes available on the market. I particularly like the one offered by Amazon. For $135, it includes LED lights, a white background, a light, and a portable case.
I usually add more lighting for jewelry, but, other than that, the lighting that it comes with is usually enough.
If you’re shooting products bigger than a lightbox, such as clothing, opt for setting up a studio like the portable one shown below from Neewer:
For about $160, you get lighting, a background, soft umbrellas, and clamps.
3. Find the right camera and lens.
The DSLR is one of the most recommended cameras for product photography because it is easy to use and affordable.
Some of the top brands are Canon and Nikon.
You’ll find some photographers who are die-hard Nikon or Canon fans, but I think either one of them is pretty good. I personally like to use the Canon Rebel. It’s affordable but still professional.
4. Use camera lenses and a tripod.
After a good camera, the most important piece of equipment may be the lens.
Using the wrong lens can distort your images and make them unusable.
This is what happens if you use the wide-angle lenses that usually come with many cameras. Instead, use a focal length of approximately 50 mm.
This lens size will help generate images that are closer to real life.
It’s also important to use a tripod to prevent camera shakiness or any unexpected motions that can distort the look of your images, making them blurry.
There are many imperfections that can be fixed during editing, but blurriness is not one of them.
The final images can only be as good as the quality of the photos. Even great photo editing can’t fix poor-quality images 100% of the time.
Editing or Post-Production
Finally, at this point, the products have been prepped and photographed.
Now it’s time to give the images the final touch to make them live. One of the main things to consider is where the images are going to be published.
This will change the editing style and size of the files.
For instance, if you’re planning to use your product images to sell on Amazon instead of an eCommerce store, then they will have to be edited following specific guidelines.
See some of Amazon’s guidelines below:
- Use white backgrounds.
- Make products cover at least 85% of the image.
- The image has to be 1000 pixels or larger.
Similar guidelines apply for selling on Google Shopping.
These guidelines are set in place to ensure consistency and quality in all seller product photos.
In a similar fashion, you should set and abide by your own image guidelines, even if you’re not planning to sell on those platforms, to ensure a consistent look and feel.
5. Understand web image optimization: resolution, file size, and pixels.
Un-optimized website images can slow down your eCommerce store, and, therefore, hurt your organic rankings.
That’s why keeping the right image resolution, file size, and pixels is vital for all product images.
See below a breakdown of recommended image optimizations:
- Pixels
- They don’t have a set size. They are the smallest unit of information contained in a picture. Pixels and image dimensions help make up the image resolution.
- 1000px is usually recommended for most product images.
- Image File Size
- The image file size is determined by the number of pixels in an image and its dimension.
- Aim to have file sizes lower than 100kb to prevent slowing down your site.
6. Note the differences between color correction and retouching.
Note that retouching is different from color correction.
Retouching is more labor-intensive and involves altering the image beyond its color.
For instance, shine can be added, parts removed, airbrushed, or more. Color correction just deals with fixing the color of the image, white balance, saturation, vibrancy, and more.
I’d recommend using color correction for all your product images, but retouching may not be required for all of them.
Color correction will help ensure that your product images look true to life and don’t deceive any customers.
If you’re not experienced with Photoshop, I’d recommend using a tool like Canva or Pixlr.
Alternatively, you can also outsource the editing for an affordable price. Companies like Pixc or Picsera offer color corrections for about $1 or less per photo.
So, if you don’t have a team or technical abilities, outsourcing might be the right solution for you.
When setting up an online shop, there are ample choices of CMS’s to consider, but, these days, Shopify is emerging as a spectacular choice for designing eCommerce websites. Hosted with avant-garde features, Shopify gets your online store started up in a matter of seconds.
Designed keeping all the startup businesses in mind, Launch offers umpteen options for high customization. It is designed for startup businesses that are aiming to head towards success.
For all those businesses that are dealing in the world of gaming, GameWorld Shopify theme is the right choice for them. It is developed using the advanced technological features.
Canopy is the right choice for business promotion. It is one of the visually-appealing themes that is designed specifically for fashion brands.
With features that are completely flexible like product views, navigation style, typographic choices and collection views, Minimal adds a stunning appeal to your business website.
This multi-purpose, responsive eCommerce theme is designed for stores of all types. A mega menu is available with advanced filter module that helps shoppers to sort out products as per the size, color and price.
Packed with advanced features, AP Next Store gets your website running in a matter of seconds. The theme is completely responsive and presents 6 different layout options and shortcodes for inserting buttons, Facebook, YouTube, Product lists, sliders and much more.
London is a stylish yet clean design theme for businesses dealing in handicrafted items. It is featured with a fully responsive design. It is completely a premium theme that comes with top-of-the-line features.
This multipurpose, responsive Shopify theme is meant for any range of businesses. It comes with features like advanced product filters, SEO optimization, auto complete suggestion search and so on.
Handy is a simple to use, responsive and stylish Shopify theme that comes without of the box layout configurator. This configurator allows to set mega menus, live search, wishlist, social networking and much more.
The latest version of jQuery, i.e. jQuery 3.0 is finally here and developers across the world are working towards using the new functionality.
AI, Artificial intelligence, is nothing new to discuss.
One of the most used photo sharing platforms on the internet is Instagram.
Every Instagram influencer has a set target audience that they cater to which mainly requires them to create their own specific field.
The best way to grab the attention of your followers is by telling a story through your posts.