The Best Product Photography Image Optimisation Advice

It is no longer enough to just have some nice images of your products for an e-commerce website or product listing. Your competitors are consistently searching for ways to get that edge, drawing customers to their products and a fantastic way to stand out from the crowd is to optimise your product photography. We’ve put together some top tips below:

Think about colour combinations

This concept is key across all forms of product photography, whether that is furniture, gadgets or fashion photography. You want to catch your customer’s eye with a powerful combination of colours that not only work together but enhance the product itself. The first way to do this is to think about the photo shoot set up, your props, backgrounds and lighting. Do they complement the product and deliver that wow factor?

It may not be possible to get the brightness or such a vibrant colour combination with standard photos and this is where a talented editing team or editing software comes in. You can make minor changes to the colours, brightness and patterns that really give it a polished, professional look ready for your website.

Use product shadows

A common practice in e-commerce, particularly those working in fashion photography because of the desire to make clothing stand out. It depends on the type of product you are working with as to the type of shadow to use, it may be natural shadow or reflection shadow for example.

What all of these options have in common is that they help take flat, unimaginative product photography and turn it into smarter, more natural images that pop out of the page. You will want to perform some tests to find the right kind of shadow for your particular product, especially when dealing with plain white backgrounds that many e-commerce websites require for the main image.

Use multiple angles

In your optimisation bag of tricks, there should always be time set aside to take photographs of a product from multiple angles. Anyone working in product photography should always remember that a customer cannot touch, feel or turn these products and it’s your job to bridge that gap.

Where possible, photograph each product from all of the important angles and perspectives, such as close up shots of detail and far away angled shots to show the product as a whole. This is vital for clothing because people will want to know how a dress looks from the front, behind, any detail up close and more!

Show people with your products

The last of our optimisation tips is all about bringing your products and people together in photographs. This has a few benefits starting off with the ability to show your products in motion and being used. For example, if you’re selling some running shoes then have an image of someone running in them so the customer can picture that real-life scenario.

In general, using people will allow your potential customers to have a frame of reference, estimating size, imaging how they would hold them or wear them, picturing a scenario that they can relate to. If your customers develop a connection with your product photos then they will be far more likely to purchase those products.