Product Photo Editing 101: Tips, Tools, Services & More

Updated on February 15, 2023 in Photo Editing by Nishant Shrimali

There is a lot of air around the topic of product photo editing and to be honest, we understand it. It’s a resourceful and time-consuming service that every eCommerce needs but lacks to understand.

That is why we are sharing the ultimate guide on product photo editing to clear all your doubts and answer all your questions.

Who are we?

We are a leading product photo editing service helping eCommerce and online business owners across the globe for more than six years. But for now, let’s just focus on the most common questions we get asked about product photo editing and its importance.

What is Product Photo Editing?

Product photo editing is a part of commercial photo editing where images are edited for the purpose of building a brand and selling products online. This includes services like background removal, color correction, retouching, cropping & margining.

We’ll be discussing all these services, and more further in the article. But do you think they are important for eCommerce?

Is Product Photo Editing important?

Yes, product photo editing is very important. It allows you to attract customers and sell your products online. But more importantly, it enhances your customer experience by showcasing clean and flawless images of your product.

Think about it. Would you be interested in buying a new T-shirt with visible lint in the image?

According to a survey, almost 75% of online consumers rely on product photos. That means in order to convert the majority of your audience, you’ll need to invest in a professional product photo editing service.

If you are anything like the majority of online consumers, you want your product to look superior with the best quality. This can easily be reflected through good product photo editing. And that’s how important product photography and image editing are in eCommerce.

And now, before discussing how to edit product photos, let us look at the benefits of product photo editing for eCommerce.

Benefits of getting your Product Image edited

We now know the importance of product photo editing, but benefits are still pending. So here we go. More reasons to get your product image editing are:

Attracts Customer

A good image is a visual cue that tells a lot about the product. And your customers want to know everything about it. So when you have high-quality, clean, and attractive images on your site, you can easily attract customers and engage them.

Builds Brand

One can easily make the brand stand out through the product images. This can be done by following a particular style guide of the brand. If you do so, your images become your brand advocate and play a major role in building brand awareness.

Improves Customer Experience

Using high-quality product images is very important for customer experience. It brings consistency to your images and makes it easy for your customer to engage with them.

Product image editing also ensures that any dust, marks, or scratches that might harm the customer experience are removed during post-production.

Builds Trust

Around 46% of consumers have said that it’s easy for them to trust a brand that uses high-quality images. And to be honest, it’s fair. For an online customer, your product images are the only way to engage with your product. When they do, it is fair to ask for high-quality product images to see all the details.

Multi-platform Customization

Selling online means getting sales from various channels. This could be your website, your social media, or another marketplace where you list your products. All these platforms have their own product image guidelines that you have to follow. 

Product photo editing gives you an opportunity to make your product images platform fit with quick customization and editing.

Hides Imperfections

Let’s be honest, no matter how careful you are, there are always some dust, marks, scratches, or unwanted wrinkles that must be taken care of. Product photo editing services ensures that all these imperfections are removed and your products are well organized to present to your customer.

Step-by-step Product Photography for Beginners

As we said, you’ll be learning EVERYTHING about getting the best product images on your site. So, let’s start with the step-by-step product photography guide for beginners.

Product photography equipment

Camera & lens

The first and surely one of the most important product photography equipment is the camera and the lens that’ll you use to capture your product images.

While you don’t always need a huge expensive camera, we’ll recommend a decent DSLR with multiple lens attachments. For lens, you can go for 16-35mm or something similar, depending on your products.

Lighting

The lighting source is very crucial as it gives you consistency among all your images. We’d recommend a softbox. But if you would like to learn more, we have already shared this in types of lighting equipment.

Tripod

For stability and consistency, it is very important that your camera is placed on a tripod. It gives much more control and freedom to walk around without disturbing the camera.

Backdrop

A clean backdrop is the most recommended background for product photography. This could be of grey, white or off-white color depending on your choice. Either way, you can remove the background during the product photo editing as well.

Reflector

Reflectors are used to illuminate the darker side (opposite to the light source) of the product. It gives an equal distribution of light and improves overall product photography.

Product Photography Setup

With all the equipment, it’s time for you to get started with product photography.

Step-1: Set Up Your Studio

Let’s understand a simple product photography studio setup to get started.

Backdrop in the back, lighting in the right, reflector on the left, and your camera will be aligned with the product.

During the process, you’ll have to adjust the setting depending on the product size, style, and the way you capture it. So be open to change and set up your whole studio before you get started.

Step-2: Prepare The Products

After your studio is set, you need to prepare your products. Make sure they are clean, wrinkle-free, lint-free, and with no visible dust.

Your products must be presentable and attractive when you capture them. If there are still a few imperfections left, that will be taken care of during eCommerce image post-production.

Step-3: Adjust Camera Settings

There are a few things that you have to keep in mind while practicing product photography.

• Make sure no side or the corners of your product image are cropped.
• The color of your product image matches the product in real life.
•  You take multiple shots of your product (at least 8) to show all sides and details of your product.
• The image is clear, crips and the sides are clearly visible.
• Your lens and camera are clean with no trace of dirt or fingerprints on them.
• Save files in RAW format to make it easy to edit during photo editing for product photography

Step-by-step Product Photo Editing for beginners

The role of product photography is done. Now it’s time for the product photo editing to do the rest of your work. Note that you might not need each and every product photo editing service for your images.

These are the most common and useful eCommerce image post-production services that are being used.

Background Removal

Background removal service is an easy product photo editing service where you get rid of the background of your products.

Background removal service is used to add a consistent background to all the images.

This makes the whole eCommerce look much more organized and improves the customer experience with a huge margin. Most commonly white, off-white, or grey color is used as the new background.

Also, the background removal service makes it easy to use the product images for various other purposes such as banners, social media, coupons, etc.

Learn more about the Step-By-Step Guide To Remove Background In Photoshop.

Color Correction

During product photography, chances are some colors of your product might not be easily visible. This is no one’s fault. All you need is a color correction service that makes sure that your product looks exactly the way they are in real life. This is used to improve your eCommerce customer experience and customer satisfaction by a huge margin.

We have already discussed Why is Color Correction in eCommerce important and How-To do it? in our detailed guide.

Add Shadow

Shadows do play a very important role in a product image. They help us understand the depth and give a real-world understanding of how the product will look. There are mainly four types of shadow.

• Original Shadow
• Natural Shadow
• Reflective Shadow
• Drop Shadow

Here, you can learn everything about shadow adding service and its benefit in our guide What Is Shadow Effect In Photos? 7 Benefits Of Using Shadow Effect.

Ghost Mannequin effect

Ghost mannequin is a fashion product image editing service where a mannequin is used to showcase fashion products instead of models.

It is a cost-effective method where instead of hiring a model repetitively for various shoots, a mannequin is bought once and used again and again.

Further invisible ghost mannequin service is used to remove any visible portion of the mannequin. This gives a 3D effect to your clothes, as shown in the image above.

Learn How to get Ghost Mannequin Photography for Clothing the right way.

Clipping Path

The clipping path service is an image editing tool that helps you make a selection of your product precisely. No matter what your product is, what irregular shape it has you can create a clear selection of the product using the same tool.

Once selected you can edit it separately as a whole different image.

Best Free Online Photo Editor 2023

There are various free online photo editing tools that even you can use to get started. Some of the most reliable photo editing tools in 2023 are:

GIMP

GIMP is among the few free online photo editors that allow you to edit your images with the help of high-end tools. While it is free, it has the quality of all the high-end image editing that you can use to get desirable results.

Pixlr

Pixlr is a free mobile and PC image editing tool that comes with tools such as red-eye correction, gradient, brush tool, and more. It has an easy-to-use interface and various options that you can use to edit your images. Comes with a premium plan, but you can even stick with the free version if you want.

Fotor

Another free online photo editing tool that we recommend for beginners is the Fotor. It is an extremely dynamic platform with tools that you can use to get high-end editing. The best part about Fotor is surely its easy to use interface.

Inkscape

Are you looking for a free image editing and illustration tool? Try Inkscape for that. It is a great platform with versatile tools that allow you to manipulate images as per your wish.

Photo Pos Pro

If you are looking for a free product photo editing tool, we’d like to introduce Photo Pos Pro for you. A free product image editing tool that allows you to Remove background, unwanted objects, color correction, and more.

What is a Professional Photo Editing Service?

A professional photo editing service is an image retouching and optimization service that helps eCommerce get its product photos edited. This includes image retouching, color correction, background removal, ghost mannequin, and more.

A professional photo editing service ensures that all the product images of an eCommerce site are consistent with their image editing style and are edited in the best possible way to drive conversion and engagement.

How much does it cost to have photos edited?

A freelance photo editor would charge about $20-$150 per hour which is fair. But if you are an eCommerce with an expanding inventory, you’ll need a more reliable and cost-effective product image editing service.

Like PixelPhant.

We are a leading eCommerce product photo editing service that works with brands around the globe as their reliable post-production team. Pricing? It starts at just $0.80 per image. Moreover, you only pay for what you get and no additional cost.

Bonus Take Away

And with all the learning from this guide, we are sure you have a good understanding of what you want for your brand. Either way, we have to understand that product photo editing for eCommerce plays a huge role.

Be it in attracting customers, or creating a great customer experience. You need a product photo editing service that can help you with all your specifications.

If you are looking for something just like that, get a free product photo editing trial from PixelPhant 👇.