If you’re a small business owner trying to handle your own product photography, it can be a challenge. Whether you’re a retail store selling products online or a restaurant spicing up your menu with food photos, images of your offerings are a crucial aspect of your business. In the busy life of a business owner or manager, spending more time on photos may seem like a hassle, but retouching your product photos can take them to the next level! Attractive photos can be a tremendous boost to your marketing and sales.
You don’t want to use a photo that is under-saturated, over-exposed, busy, or just misses that special something. You want to use attractive photos that not only provide helpful information for your customer’s decision-making process, but that reflect what your product looks like in real life.
When you retouch your product photos, keep this in mind so your business will stand out from your competitors—and your customers will be happy.
As you retouch your photos, ask yourself:
- Is this photo representative and accurate?
- Is there any information I can add that would be helpful to buyers?
- Is there anything I should take away so the focus is on the product and my business?
Make Sure Your Product Photos Look Like Your Product
You can achieve a completely different vibe through color grading. In your family photos, this allows you to make a sunset more vibrant or a portrait less saturated so you don’t look sunburnt.
But when it comes to product photography, accuracy is the key. Of course, when shopping digitally, the color you see may vary according to the monitor, but you should still make an effort to assure that colors are accurate in the original. If your mouthwatering food photos attract customers, make sure the photos look like the actual dish and avoid frustrating expectations.
Business 2 Community found that 22% of returns happen because a product looks different in person. You won’t get very high sales if customers are constantly returning your products. Taking a photo of a peacock blue throw and having it appear navy in photos leads to unhappy customers. You may need to retake the photo in better lighting, or just brighten the shot. You might even need to address the color cast.
It’s also important for the features to be clear—don’t be afraid to take close-ups of fine details. Making sure the shoppers in your online store know what to expect from your products is key for customer satisfaction.
Add Branding or Information to Your Product Photos
Photo editing can allow you to add information that you didn’t have in the original shot.
For instance, if you own a business that sells backpacks, you may want to edit a picture to display size measurements beside your backpack, so buyers will know how large or small it is.
As another example, if you’re a restaurant owner, just taking photos of your food is not going to display your branding! Not unless you, say, include a napkin with your logo in the shot. But you could overlay your branding and logo onto the corner of the photo or adjust the background to include your branding colors or other elements important to identifying your business.
Remove Elements That Distract from Your Product
You should also consider removing blemishes or unwanted areas from your product photos. A photo of a television may have an unsightly reflection on the screen. You might want to remove a shadow from the background that is a distracting shape or looks dirty. There are a variety of easy photo editing tools to remove blemishes from the scene, specks of dust on the lens, or whole elements that need to be removed.
While you’re doing this, just make sure you’re still presenting an accurate picture of your product. Don’t “enhance” your images so much that they no longer look like what your customer will receive.
So, remember these three things you definitely need to do if you’re wanting to handle your own photography: make sure the photos are accurate, add important information or branding, and remove distracting elements.
Make sure when taking your own photos that they are attractive and clean. Most of these operations will be tricky if you’re not professionally trained! Need help? No problem! Alongside produce photography, we have extensive experience in restaurant menu design and ecommerce websites. Contact us, and we’ll help you make your photos look professional and beautiful.
