Professional Product Photography at Home (and Cheap!)
You can make professional product shots at home, and for less money than you think.
It is a common misconception amongst Amazon sellers that in order to have clean and beautiful product shots, you need a professional photographer or professional equipment. Below, I will walk through suggestions and steps for taking perfect product shots from home or your home office.
1. Camera (we will use the iPhone 5 as an example)
2. Clamp lights and light bulbs
4. White sheet or pillowcase
Much of your setup will depend on the size of your products. If you are lucky, this may be something that you can do from your dining room table.
For the studio backdrop, we will need to make line-less background.
The goal is to have an infinite looking background, without creases and folds. Any flubs or issues will just have to be edited out in post, so spend a little time perfecting, ironing and smoothing your backdrop. It will save you time in the long run. This is where cardstock comes in handy. It is bright white, and does not need to be ironed.
For the setup, I use a standing box and clamp an ironed sheet or pillowcase to the widest side. I drape the sheet down until it makes a curve in the fabric. Again, the size of the box and sheet depends on what I am photographing.
For some extra support, I lay a large piece of cardstock on top of the fabric, just where the curve starts to come down. This is perfect for smaller items. For larger items, you can just use the sheet.
Lighting is very important. Getting this right will give your products the “studio feel”. For smaller products, I find it easier to use natural lighting and and one single clamp light overhead.
For larger products, you might need two or even four clamp lights. For products smaller than 7 inches high, one light clamp will do. The goal of lighting your products is to reduce deep shadows. A light diminished shadow is perfectly natural, but a shadow that extends 20% past the product looks homemade.
I set up the camera in front of the source of natural light, and one light above the product. So, if you are using a window, it should be behind you. If you have products that are glass or plastic, you may experience a glare from the window. I would recommend adding wax paper over the window. This will allow the light to come in and but reduce the direct light glare.
I love clamp lights for lighting product shots. I often load up on them at Home Depot. They are cheap and amazingly versatile. I also buy a multi plug extension cord for all of them. Move your lights around until you get the shortest shadow you can, while still illuminating the product.
My absolute favorite camera for product photography is the Canon Rebel XTi. It is a DSLR and crazy-powerful, but it is a little pricey for casual product photography. If you really, really want one, but can not quite justify the expense- checkout the refurb section of the Canon store. Bodies start at around $250-$300. So, for the purposes of this demonstration, I used my handy iPhone and any smartphone camera will do. It truth, this was a perfect alternative. I could quickly snap pictures and just send them to my dropbox account with the push of a button. By the time I got to my computer- they were loaded and ready.
I used the default settings with no flash. This is important. The flash will ruin the lighting you so carefully just setup.
I use a full size camera tripod for all of my product shots. It was easy to just balance the iPhone on the top of the tripod and snap a picture. Also, all product shots are fairly consistent when you are able to line the camera up on the same tripod. The goal is to get a straight shot of the product- head on.
Get as close to the product as you can with out fish-eying it. You know, where one side seems distorted or out of focus. Amazon will let you upload 3000 x 3000px product image, which is what I recommend. Now with retna screens, images need to be sharper and larger. The minimum is 500px, and this will look fine on a non-retna screen, but in a year or two as technology shifts, you will long for better pictures.
Did you know that the top volume button on iPhone is also snaps a picture? This lets you hold the phone like a camera and snap pictures, without having to thumb the button on the screen.
Take three images every time. I always find a fuzzy image or two after I upload them to the computer. Add in an alternative shot with every shoot. If it is a handbag, show the inside. If it is food, show the nutrition label. Anything you would want to know about this image. The effort will pay you back in your conversion rates.
Since this is their sandbox and we are just playing in it, it would be good to know the rules before snapping away.
For your product images to appear properly, they must meet the following basic requirements:
Use one of the following formats: JPEG (.jpg) or GIF (.gif) (As a best practice, we recommend that your images be JPEGs)
Do not use animated images
Set the resolution to 72 dots per inch (DPI)
Set the size to at least 500 pixels (and up to 3000 pixels) on each side (We strongly recommend that you use consistently sized images)
To activate zoom, set it between 1280 and 3000 pixels on the longest side; to take full advantage of zoom we recommend at least 2560 pixels on the longest side
Do not include spaces in the file names
Do not use any of the following characters in the file names: "[", "]", "*", "<", ">", "?", ":", "|"
In addition, we also recommend that you consider the aesthetics of the images you choose, because effective product images attract customers. Follow these aesthetic guidelines to ensure image quality:
The image accurately matches the product description in size and color
The image is a photo and not a drawing
The photo is taken at a flattering angle
The product is focused and well-lit
Close-up shots are not obscured by highlights or shadows
The product occupies at least 80 percent of the image area
The entire product is depicted in the image
The image includes only what the customer will be receiving (Accessories that are not part of the product should not be shown)
The image displays the exact quantity of items the customer will be receiving (For example, if the product is a single mixing bowl, do not include other bowls in different sizes and colors in the photo)
Backgrounds are simple and clean, and do not to distract from the product; ideally, the background is pure white
Images do not have borders, text, or other decorations
The one that makes me laugh is the request that the image be a photo not a drawing. Ha! What is this, the 1890’s?
Please no wild west era “wanted” posters of your products. Thank you. Love, Amazon.
For photo editing, I use Photoshop CS6. But, have you checked the prices on this? Quite an investment. I am going to walkthrough some more wallet friendly alternatives. If you are dead set on having the best of the best, and you want the full Photoshop- Adobe now offers a Creative Cloud monthly service fee. So, instead of paying upfront for the Adobe products, you can pay $10 to $30 a month and get access to everything Adobe has to offer. For the purposes of this project, this is not necessary.
Originally intended for Etsy users, FotoFuze is a photo editing web software that exists to create white backgrounds for your products. It is incredibly intuitive. You create a product, upload the image into an album and highlight the area of the product. Fotofuze will do the rest.
Pixlr is as close as you can get to photoshop for free. It is a web based photo editor, which means you do not have to download software. It is easy and intuitive and offers many options for improve the color and balance of your photos.
For this photo, I used Crop, Eraser and Vibrance.
To round out the experiment, let's look at an image edited in Photoshop. In this image I was able to take out the yellow cast with Color Replace.
There are a few more alternatives to Photoshop available, if you are curious try Spashup and Inkscape.
Keep calm and happy photo snapping,
PS: Any tips or tricks, please add in the comments below. Help your fellow sellers out!
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