When it comes to visuals for your online shop or e-commerce site, there’s no doubt that product photography is incredibly important. Poor photos can stall your sales, but great images are essential to branding your products in the best possible light and presenting your store as desirable and trustworthy. Even if you don’t have the money to invest in professional photography, today’s smartphone cameras have advanced to the point that you can take professional-looking photos without a DSLR camera. Take a look at these tips on how to shoot and prepare your photos for your online store.
1. Before You Start Taking Photos
Before you start shooting, there are a few things that you’ll need to prepare.
Clean your smartphone lens before you start snapping photos because a dirty lens will decrease the sharpness and quality of your photos.
Turn flash off. Flash is great if you are shooting in a dimly lit area, but you’re not going to (more on lighting later), so forget that it even exists.
Test out various camera modes because most smartphones come with different settings and modes that you can take advantage of when snapping photos.
2. Set the Lighting
Lighting quality is something you must consider if you want to take great product images. Bright lights will help you take the best product shots, and the most optimal light you could use is sunlight. Try taking your photos close to an open window or set products up outside on a sunny day. If that’s not possible, then you should invest in a soft-box or some professional lights.
3. Shooting Range and Angles
It depends on the look of the product you’re shooting. If it has a lot of details, then you should capture them in a close-up photo. On the other hand, larger items (such as furniture) should be shot from a distance to capture their beauty. Be sure always to take multiple photos of an item so your customers can see how it looks from different angles. Also, be sure to get a tripod because you’ll never be able to get a perfect show when holding a camera by hand.
4. Style Your Product and Set the Backdrop
To reduce the work and time in post-production, you need to prepare your products thoroughly. Repair imperfections (tears, stains, or missing buttons), remove tags, stickers, and labels. Eliminate wrinkles and ensure the products free of dust. As for the backdrop, avoid shooting a product in a field of view that is crowded with other products and go for neutral backgrounds that will make your product stand out.
5. Photo Editing
Digital editing has advanced quite a lot, and you can use editing software to clean your photos, saturate the colors, tweak shadows and lighting, and get rid of any glares.
6. Set the Right Photo Size
When posting product images on your online shop or e-commerce site, you need to resize and crop them so that they’re all the same size. This will help make them appear professional and well-organized on your page and improve user experience because small-sized photos will reduce your page loading time. If they come in a range of sizes, your customers will struggle to browse the items on your online store. You can edit them using a standard image editing program.
Learning how to prepare your pictures for the online store may be the key to your store’s success, and it is easier than it first seems. The bottom line is that high-quality photos can invite more sales.
As for your e-commerce platform, DG1 offers a centralized system that will enable you to operate your entire web presence. Online retail comes with a myriad of advantages that you can take hold of with your software solutions. Get started today and take a look at what we are offering.
Tags: web, image, photo editing
