Immaculate photo = credible business
A sloppy photo cast doubts on the quality of the product or service.
Online retail is highly competitive. We can not compromise our product success with low-quality media.
If you think that photos of a product on a white background are boring, I feel you. It is more fun to take our product to a mid-century style garden and shoot it in the golden rays of the setting sun. We definitely should do something like this and use these epic pictures for advertising, social media, and inside the carousel of photos on Amazon and Wayfair.
Speaking about Amazon, Wayfair, Macys and other major retail websites, they require a photo of the product on a white background for a cover shot. They have a point. It looks so much better when the images on the website are unified. High-quality catalog images on white are also may come in handy for the company website and promo materials. If you are working on catalog photos, run this photo-on-white checklist to make that everything looks good and increase the chances for product success.
Hit the play button if you like to watch videos (this one is only 3 min long)
or scroll down to read the post and download the handout.
1. Make it true WHITE! We don't want our wonderful product to stand out on Amazon with a blueish or grayish background. There is only one shade of true white that allows the product seamlessly blend with a background of the website. Ask your designer or photographer to make the background pantone - #ffffff, rgb(255,255,255.)
2. Consistency is important! All similar products should be consistent in angles and sizes. It is OK to have a variation of angles, but in this case they have to be not slightly but completely different.
3. Without a shadow our product will be floating on the photo like a ghost. Seriously! Do preserve a shadow in editing or draw a new one in post production.
4. Keep an eye on the edges of the product. Lazy photographers don't want to spend time photoshoping the background and try to make it disappear during the shoot. Cranking up the light does the trick with the background it also eats up a piece of the product itself.
5. Dirty borders of the photo is one of the most common white background photography mistakes. It is also very easy to avoid. Even for an amateur photo editor it takes only 4 brushstrokes around the borders or a quick "select all" + "Stroke" function to ensure the seamless and shameless look of the photo on websites.
6. It seems obvious, but hey, make sure that the product is thoroughly cleaned before the shoot. There should be no dust, no scratches, no fingerprints on it.
Save this post, forward it to your designer or photographer, so they can run this check and make sure they are producing top-notch visual content.
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