Product photography

This article is meant to give an insight about product photography made by our company.

What is the intended use of the photos?

Web, print or both?

For web, photos needs to have a relatively low resolution, around 2 megapixels. The background usually has to be pure white and the aspect ratio of the image is best when it's 1:1 square.

For printing it's good to have a resolution of at least 6 megapixels for the cases when the product photo is printed on a full A4 page. The background transparency is welcome if composite of multiple product images must be done.

How many photos do you need per product?

Snapping one single photo per product is the cheapest way, but often the products need to be presented from multiple viewing angles. Generally this means 2 or 3 images of a product.

Exotic approaches like fine rotation of the product in the front of the camera is possible. Everything is a question of time and budget.

How many variations do you need?

Product photos on pure white has disadvantages such as lack of scale or the inability to best present the use-case of the product. We offer product photos taken in the product's natural environment, or the use moment of the product by an imaginary end-user.

These photos usually are shot on a given background and aren't suitable for primary product photos.

How many photo shooting sessions should we have?

Providing the products in batches involves separate transportation, studio setup, and electronic post-processing, etc. All the extra steps raise the costs of the whole job.

It is best to provide all products at once tho have a single shooting session.

How variate are the products for one shooting session?

Taking photos of products with different properties and sizes involves variations in studio/lighting setup which introduces significant delays in the production.

Are there extra cost/losses when producing photos?

Yes, there can be extra losses or material sacrifices during product photography.

In food photography the touching or cutting of the subject cannot be avoided. Usually, when photographing food, the producer must provide a special batch of products produced with extra attention on details, without special labels and packaging. Due to the practices used by photography sessions, food may easily become contaminated, therefore inappropriate for consumption after the session.

Different, non-food products, need to be unpacked, set-up for normal use in order to be photographed. This means destroying of seals or packaging, tracks of usage on surfaces, etc. Some kind of products may become easily unusable after a photo shooting session.

Where is the shooting session done?

Preferably the photos are created in our studio, so the products have to be shipped to us. However, there is a possibility to create a temporary studio at the customer's location if the transport of the products is difficult.

Images showing the use of the product are photographed in nature or in the actual location of the product, which involves a temporary studio on site.

What file formats do you provide?

The primary file format is RGB TIFF with transparency or layers. From this we provide PNG or JPG images.

Summary

Our company is producing high resolution images which are best for both printing and displaying on the web.

The images are processed digitally, so we guarantee proper contrast and color accuracy; the images will not contain underexposed or overexposed areas. By retouching we remove unwanted image elements such as dust, manufacturing defects, labels, or logos.

Upon request, we produce isolated images with transparent background. This involves a longer processing time.

Prices

The prices are calculated based on time. We calculate in the time needed for preparing the products, photographing the products and post processing the raw photos. The costs of photographing a give batch of products can be easily estimated before, but the final price is calculated after finishing the work, mostly because unforeseen extra operations.

As per agreement with the customer, transportation of the goods can be done by us, or by the customer. Frequent or long-distance transportation of goods may involve additional costs from our part.