Stores remain closed or partly open depending on the week, and many Quebec businesses have spent the last year putting their products online quickly. Browsing several of these new stores, one observation stands out: the products are good, but the photos are hurting sales.
Common examples include dark photos taken in the kitchen, a sweater laid on a bed with a laundry basket in the corner, or three consecutive products each photographed on a different table under different lighting.
A studio is not needed to correct this. All that is required is a phone, a window, something white and an hour during which the setup stays in place.
How do you set up a low-cost product photography studio?
Most recent phones take photos of more than sufficient quality for an online store. The problem is not the camera, but the light.
Set up a table next to a large window. The goal is indirect daylight: a window that does not receive direct sun, or a cloudy day. Direct sun creates hard shadows and overexposed areas. If the sun is hitting the window, attach a white shower curtain or a sheet of parchment paper to it to create a softbox for a few dollars.
For the background, a sheet of white bristol board curved up against a wall or a stack of books creates a continuous sweep, with no visible line where the table meets the wall. Place a second white board on the side opposite the window to bounce light into the shadows. The studio is then complete.
A few precautions make a big difference:
- Turn off the lights in the room. Mixing yellow bulbs with daylight produces colours that are difficult to correct.
- Do not use the flash.
- Do not use digital zoom. Move the phone closer instead, or crop afterwards.
- Clean the lens, since a phone is often carried in a pocket.
- Use a small tripod or a support so that every photo is taken from exactly the same spot.
Why use the same angle and framing for every product?
Because it is what gives a small store a professional appearance. This step is nevertheless often overlooked.
When every product in a category is photographed from the same height, at the same angle and filling a similar share of the frame, the category page looks orderly and consistent. Customers can compare products at a glance. When every photo is different, the store gives an impression of disorder, even if each photo on its own is fine.
Define your setup and write it down: the height of the phone on the tripod, its distance from the table, the product centred and the space to leave around it. Tape marks on the table are very helpful. Then photograph all products in the same session if possible, because the light changes through the day and the goal is uniform images.
Square crops are a safe choice. They work on the store, in Google Shopping and on Instagram without significant adjustment.
Which photos should you plan for each product?
A photo of the front is not enough. The customer cannot handle the product, so the photos must fill that role.
The main image
It shows the whole product on a clean, plain background, with nothing else. This is the image that appears on the category page, in search results and in shopping ads.
The supporting images
- The back and sides.
- A close-up of the material, stitching, texture and label.
- Something that shows scale: a hand holding the product, a person wearing it, or a mug next to a standard coffee cup.
- The product in use, in a real setting. This is where lifestyle photos belong, not in the main image.
- The contents of the box, if the product has more than one piece.
Photos that show scale reduce returns. Half of the emails reporting that a product is smaller than expected involve a product photographed alone on white, with nothing for comparison.
What are Google Shopping's image requirements?
If you plan to list your products on Google, and listings in the Shopping tab are currently free, the main image must follow Google's rules. Google's help page for the image link attribute in Merchant Center sets them out in detail, and we recommend reading it before photographing an entire catalogue.
In summary, based on our reading: the image must clearly show the actual product, with no placeholder graphics, no promotional text overlaid ("free shipping", "sale"), no watermarks, no borders and no logos added on top. A white or plain background is recommended. Each colour or variant should have its own accurate image. Products that do not follow these rules can be disapproved, which means they simply do not appear.
The advantage is that a clean white-background main image is also the one that performs best on your own store. The work is therefore done only once.
How much editing should you apply?
Light editing. Free editing apps are more than sufficient. Straighten the image, crop it to your standard framing, raise the brightness slightly so the white background is truly white, and check that the colour matches the real product. This last point is important: a sweater delivered in a different shade of blue than the photo leads to a return and a dissatisfied customer.
Avoid over-sharpening, do not apply filters to product photos and keep the originals in case you want to redo the edits.
Also name your files with words that describe the product, and complete the alt text in your store. It is a modest SEO gain, but one that very few businesses take advantage of.
If the results remain unsatisfactory, or if you have a few hundred products to photograph, using a product photography service becomes worthwhile. We do recommend trying the window method first, as it produces surprisingly good results.