Product Photos for Small Business

If you have a small business that sells small goods online you're probably keen for an affordable way to create photos of your products. It's also quite likely that you want to be able to create photos that look like they are floating on the page/don't have a background behind them. Something like this:

You probably think that this sort of thing is quite expensive and requires a professional photographer with a special camera.

You are wrong.

You can do this yourself for little or no expense.

I'll first detail how you can do this then, for those that are interested, I'll go through why you can do this.

The How:

Materials:
- The product(s) you want to photograph
- a digital camera of reasonable quality (i.e. probably not the one on your cellphone)
- a window or similar light source
- material that is a different colour to the product you want to photograph OR a lot of free time. Blue, birght green, white, or black material are common options. You will need enough to create a floor underneath and fabric wall behind your product(s)
- photo editing software such as photoshop (expensive) or gimp (free)
- a way to resize the photos you will take

Procedure:
1) Lay your coloured material in front of your light source and clip it to something tall to create the wall. If possible do this on a table in front of a window. Ensure that the material has as few wrinkles in it as possible. For smaller objects you could drape the fabric over a chair, eventually placing the object on the seat of the chair.
2) Place your product on the material. You may like to place it on a box to raise it off the material
- The box will need to be the same colour as the material, placed under the material, or be hidden by the object itself.
3) Take a photo using your digital camera. You will probably want to use the highest optical zoom you have available to avoid image distortion. DO NOT USE DIGITAL ZOOM. Avoid using the flash.

The no flash setting on your camera probably looks like this

4) Transfer the files to your computer and open them in your editing software
5) Using the selection tool click on the background colour. Keep selecting it until it is all selected.
6) Hit delete
7) Either save this as it is or add a plain background behind it then save.
8) Resize to fit the requirements of your website

Why don't I need professional equipment for this?
The key reason you don't need amazing equipment for this is that web images don't need to be very high resolution. As such differences in image quality between professional and non-professional equipment become less noticeable.

In fact low resolution images are ideal for web use as they load more quickly.

Why would I want a professional to do this for me?

First, it will save you time and effort. Secondly, and more importantly, what I've covered here is the very basic version of this. A professional will give greater attention to detail from shot to shot and will play with how the light falls on your object. In the example above the light source was static. Additionally if you have bigger products this sort of thing gets a bit harder.

However if all you need are the results that the above set up will deliver there is no need to layout the additional expense of hiring a professional photographer.