How to Shoot Great Product Photography: A Few Tips
Many of us have found that, in the world of eCommerce, having good product images is essential (In fact, we talked about images a bit in our recent blog post, Increasing eCommerce Conversion: Product Merchandizing). But knowing how to produce those excellent images—especially if you don’t have a professional photographer on staff—can be a bit of a challenge.
Here are a few tips and tricks that can help you create product images that you can be proud of and that your customers may find compelling:
- Make “clean and sharp” your image mantra. Take care to set up the right environment for shooting the photos: a solid white background, good lighting, no shadows or highlights on the product, and with the product itself taking up at least 80 percent of the image area. There are very good resources online that discuss in detail how to configure a photo shoot. For example, take a look at the “Four Steps of Product Photography” section on this page from Smashing Magazine.
- Resist the impulse to purchase high-end photographic equipment unless you have reasons—other than just your eCommerce site—for wanting pricey cameras and accessories. You can produce excellent photos with basic equipment, and you won’t have to worry about the learning curve you’d have to go through to use the complex equipment.
- Consider providing multiple alternate views of the product, taken from different angles or sides, and showing details of the product that might not be clearly visible in the main image.
- If your eCommerce site allows for it (as Amazon Webstore does), include “swatch” images for products like clothing or other items that come in different colors or finishes. The swatch image is a close-up that gives the customer a clear picture of the texture or color of the item.
- Make sure that the images you post include only the item or items that the customer will be receiving. For example, if you include accessories in the image, they ought to be accessories that come with the product rather than accessories that can be purchased separately.
- It may be tempting to jazz up the images by including borders, text, decorations, or animations. But a crisp, simple photograph is almost always a better option. Anything that distracts, or that obscures the product, may cause your customer to choose to search for the product on a competitor’s site. eCommerce is all about trust; customers need to feel certain that what they see in the product image will be exactly what they find in the package that arrives.
- Once you’ve found an ideal size and resolution for your product images, stick to it. Your site will look more professional if all of the images are the same size and resolution.
- Depending on the type of product you’re selling, it may be helpful to include a product image that shows the relative size of the product. For example, if you’re selling a purse, consider including an image of a hand holding the purse.
Image credit: geishaboy500, “Studio Work” March 2, 2007 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
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Using a light box/tent can make a lot of difference too. Certain lighting can make an image hard to see. A light box/tent allow you maximize the effect and make details pop.
Thanks, Jim — good tip!
I made an investment of £100 or so on a light tent which included 2 lamps with pure white day light lamps. The lamps appear to be a good investment but this light tent I don’t like at all. The one thing it does for me is to produce a dark environment with the lamps not making any difference. I think an additional two lamps would probably do the trick but im not prepared to invest any more on that just seems to risky.
My plan is to take the items to be photo’ed outside in the garden in day light but not in direct sunlight with something like a pure white vinyl roll that should provide me a solid white background with no greases or gaps in the sheet. If I can figure out how to adjust the lighting from above (im sure the lamps will come in handy here) it might just do the job. When it comes down to it I want to do very little photoshopping or it’s something else I have to learn.
Image is the first thing that caught an eye of visitor to look at. So, having an attractive image of product help you to confirm an order.
Great article on some of the dos and donts. Here’s a few others to help snaz up your photos for web.
You’re almost always downsizing images for web, whether its decreasing it resolution and/or reducing its file size
If you have an image editing program that allows you to select the type of interpolation, its best to use Bicubic Sharper when downsizing. This algorithm looks at a larger number of pixels (16) to determine how to “re-interpret” the smaller size and results in a smoother image.
Another good thing to do after reducing images is to lighten it. As pixel data is reduced, the overall image does effectively soften and looses a bit of contrast. Lightening an image can help bring it back to life.
Lastly, Shadows!
Naturals are always best. If you’re able to retain the natural shadow and drop the background out, that’s always the best way to go. The typical “step or drop” shadows that are generated, usually creates more a distraction than not having one an all.
Thanks for adding some more tips to the conversation, David!