Are you a small business owner starting your online business?

Nowadays, high quality product photos can even be shot using your phone camera. Thus, producing a professional photo doesn’t need to be expensive with some improvisation. If you’re just starting up and looking to photograph your products for your ecommerce website, follow these 7 tips that will help you get things running. Your future customers are waiting to browse your goods, and when they do they will almost certainly buy with their eyes before their wallets. That means it’s crucial for your product pics to look enticing as heck. Recent Etsy shoppers reported that quality images were the No. 1 influencer in their decision to purchase.

If so, having hi-res photos are crucial for your online website. Your images are the first thing that your customers look at when deciding whether to trust your brand or make a purchase. Having aesthetically pleasing photos will encourage your web visitors to keep scrolling through your website and perhaps even induce conversions.

Nobody likes looking at blurry photos that you received from your China supplier.

So be sure to invest in a good camera. Nowadays, high quality product photos can even be shot using your phone camera. Thus, producing a professional photo doesn’t need to be expensive with some improvisation.

If you’re just starting up and looking to photograph your products for your ecommerce website, follow these 7 tips that will help you get things running. We will go through the basic essentials from setting up your lighting and backdrop to editing your photos.

Lighting matters!

It helps to highlight the colour and feel of your product. When deciding on the right lighting to use, think of your theme or how you want your photo to look – romantic, classy, modern, etc..

If you’re selling a white floral dress, you might prefer soft lighting with a grassy outdoor setting as compared to hard lighting with strong, intense shadows.

There are 2 types of lighting you can use:

• Natural Lighting

Best when you’re on a tight budget! Natural window light is the best light source that’s free and the easiest to setup! Find a large window with an abundance of light. If the light is too harsh, soften it by hanging a sheer curtain over.

If you plan to shoot outdoors, the best shooting time is early in the morning or late in the afternoon. So, remember to plan out your shooting hours so that you catch the sun before it sets.

NOTE: Avoid shooting under direct sunlight as it would create intense shadows.

• Artificial Lighting

If you want the flexibility to shoot at anytime and anywhere, invest in two-light kits (one as your main light, and another as backlighting). They give you more control of the process – light intensity and consistency of each photo – especially if you’re shooting many products.

If you’re shooting smaller objects, make use of a Lightbox. If you don’t plan on spending, create your own lightbox.

Read more about lighting setups HERE.

Find different ways to display your product for your photoshoots.

Having variety is always good. This helps to ensure that your audience will not get bored of seeing the same type of image from you.

Some examples (for retailers):

• Product on display (rack or folded)

• Product flatlay with complimentary items

• Mannequin
• Model

• Backstage shots

Think about which part of your product you want to emphasise. Is it the print on the front or the product fit at the side?

Try multiple views from different perspectives and decide which one works best for your product type.

For example, if you want your model to look taller, angle your camera slightly bottom-up to elongate the legs.

Angles to try: Top view, side view, standing eye view, table view, close-ups or further shots.

If you do not want to upload so many photos, you could always take a short video to help your customer visualise your product better.

Go for a background that matches and highlights your product. Think of it as creating a theme.

At the same time, take into account that your background colour can evoke various emotions, so think of how you want your target audience to feel when they look at your product image. For example, if you are selling toys, pick more vibrant and colourful shades that identify with creativity and joy such as yellow.

Learn more about how colour can affect our minds.

If you just want to photograph your product alone, use a white or light backdrop. This eases the editing process when retouching your images.

Snap more lifestyle photos.

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Show customers how your products look when being used, especially for fashion items. It could also serve as a useful tip on how to style your product and to show how versatile it is.

For example, showcase your top worn on different occasions from the office to a night out setting.

If you have a range of products for several customer groups, it would be advisable to feature your products being modeled by people of different ethnicity and size.

Once you’ve got your pictures ready, edit them to make them look more alive and appealing.

Basic editing includes the items below:

Brightness and contrast – Add more contrast if you want your photo to have more detail, while increasing the brightness will bring out more colour and light.

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White balance – Adjust the warmth or tint of of your image. A warmer tone will give a more summer vibe as compared to a cooler tone.

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Saturation – Use this to increase the colour intensity.

Sharpness – Sharpen the photo if you want to add definition and depth to your design or print.

Note: Just be careful not to alter the photo colour too much that it looks different from the real product.

Apps we recommend:

• Desktop – Photoshop
• Mobile – Snapseed, Lightroom, VSCO.

Think outside the box.

How else can you capture attention while showcasing your product? Make your photos look attractive and relevant at the same time.

That’s all!

We hope you’ll make use of these tips when shooting your products for your online store.

Let us know if you have any further questions by leaving a comment below!

As an e-commerce business, you need to make sure that you give your customers the right impression of your products. As they can’t see or touch them in real life, it’s essential that your product shots display your products in the best and clearest way possible. In order to achieve this, many e-commerce businesses will spend lots of time and effort editing their products shots using a photo editing software suite, as it can really make the difference between them selling and not selling. Better, more professional images also give a better impression of your brand, which is important in encouraging repeat business. So, with that in mind, here’s a list of five of the best photo editing tools on the market right now, to help you make your products look the best they can.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is probably the most famous and widely used of all the photo editing software suites out there. It markets itself as the “world’s best imaging and design app”, and has just been released in its newest version, Photoshop CC. The CC stands for ‘Create Cloud’, which is the new way in which Adobe is selling its products. Instead of buying Photoshop outright, you lease it from Adobe on a month to month or contractual basis, paying a regular fee for the use of the software. So, why is Adobe Photoshop so special?

Since its release, Photoshop has consistently been one of the best and most advanced photo editing suites on the market. It comes with a ton of pre-installed features that can really help you get the most out of your images, and make them look professional, even when shooting on a budget. It is also integrated with other Adobe software, like Lightroom, providing you with more editing features. Are there any downsides? Aside from all its great features, one of the major downsides about Photoshop is that it can be difficult to use, especially if you have little or no experience using photo editing software. Although there are a plethora of how tos and video guides available online, it can feel a little daunting at first glance.

Camera+

At the other end of the spectrum to Adobe Photoshop is Camera+. This mobile phone app is consistently rated as one of the best and top selling photo editing suites for mobile and tablet devices, and available at just £2.99 from the Google Play and Apple stores, it is considerably cheaper than Photoshop. However, it also considerably less advanced, and comes with less features. But if you’re shooting your product shots on your mobile phone, which many independent e-commerce professionals are beginning to do, especially with the advances being made in mobile technology, then this is the perfect editing software package for you. It comes with iCloud integration, and a range of advanced editing tools and features to help you take better pictures. For what it’s worth, it’s a great piece of software.

Portrait Professional

This online, easy to use photo editing service is perfect for brands who use portraits as part of the product shots for their online stores. For example, if you’re selling jewellery, hats, glasses, or anything that requires a close up of the face, then this tool is for you. Using its ingenious software, Portrait Professional detects the gender and age of the subject from their face, and then suggests edits to make it look better and sharper. You can also apply your own edits, too, from a set of editing tools that come as part of the service. You can edit the lighting and background, whiten teeth and sharpen eyes, and change the colours, all by just by moving sliders – it couldn’t be easier.

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GIMP

GIMP, which stands for The GNU Image Manipulation Program, has been around for over 20 years, and is one of the world’s most popular free photo editing tools. On open source systems like Ubuntu and other Linux variants, GIMP is the primary image editor, while it is also popular with many Mac and PC users who want the tools that come with Photoshop without the price tag. So how does it compare with the paid equivalent? For a long time, GIMP was considered inferior to Photoshop, and came with far less features and editing tools. However, since 2013, GIMP has really stepped up its game, and is now trying to match Photoshop on all fronts. While it doesn’t have Pantone colours or in-built training modules like Photoshop, GIMP does have easier commands, a simpler layout, and only takes up 1/20th of the space required by Photoshop. There are also lots of free, open source tutorials and forums with great hints and tips on how to make the most of it. If you’re looking for a great tool for editing your product shots for your online store, and you are on a budget, then GIMP might be the software solution for you.

Fotor

Like GIMP, Fotor is a free photo editing software suite, but unlike GIMP, you access Fotor through your browser, and no software needs to be installed on your system. This makes it great for working on the go or on other computers, and it comes with a range of editing features. While it doesn’t come with the same variety of tools as GIMP or Photoshop, it does have a great High Dynamic Range feature, which lets you upload three images of the same product, and fuses them all to find the best lighting from each one. However, you should be aware that it doesn’t have the complexity of either GIMP or Photoshop, and so is best used for simple editing tasks, rather than full re-works.

There you have it, a list of five of the best photo editing software suites out there on the market right now. Have you tried any of them? How have they worked for your business? Do you have any other suggestions? Let us know in the comments below.