Product Advertising Photography That Boosts Your Sales

A product photo is the first, and sometimes the only, point of contact a customer has with a product before making a purchase. There are only a couple of seconds to capture a potential customer’s attention and show that your product is better than hundreds of others. A blurry or poorly lit photo will raise doubts about the product’s quality and reliability. To boost sales, you need to catch the customer’s eye.

Don’t feel like reading the whole breakdown? We’ve pulled together a quick summary below.

Key Takeaways

• Audience and planning. Tailor your product photography to your target market and organize equipment in advance.
• Material-specific lighting. Use targeted lighting setups—such as backlighting for glass, overhead softboxes for metal and plastic, and angled side lighting for leather—to highlight textures.
• Backgrounds and props. Use clean white backgrounds for marketplaces, and textured surfaces with subtle props for lifestyle ads.
• Detail preservation. Keep labels and barcodes legible by using a macro lens with a nearly closed aperture and diffused light to eliminate glare.
• Post-production finishing. Optimize final images by removing background clutter, correcting color balance, upscaling with AI, and compressing files for fast loading speeds.

Preparation for Product Advertising Photography  

To take good product photos, a photographer must understand the audience they’re working with. Who exactly do you want to sell your product to? Are they men, women, or children? How can you best present the product, taking into account the culture and characteristics of the country where it will be sold? The answers to these questions form the framework upon which the “flesh” will later be built.

As soon as you receive the brief from the client, you need to choose your equipment and shooting location. Find a location in advance or set up a spacious studio so you can bring any idea to life. If you don’t have the equipment, consider where you can rent it and exactly what you’ll need. Product photography advertising thrives on improvisation, but that doesn’t mean everything should be decided at the last minute.

Essential Lighting Techniques for Product Shoots 

Still life photography requires sheets of white and black cardboard. These are needed to create the right background, as well as to reflect and diffuse light. Several light sources will be needed, as well as a transparent table if possible. Since different objects require different lighting, you’ll have to set up your “workspace” anew each time, adapting it to the specific conditions and situation.

1. Glass. Glassware, bottles, and other glass objects are photographed using backlighting by placing a softbox behind a large diffuser to create a soft silhouette. Side-placed black cardboard adds dark outlines.
2. Metal. Reflective objects require a large side or overhead softbox as the main light. Surround the subject with black cardboard for deep contours, and use a hard light with a honeycomb grid to highlight details like logos.
3. Plastic. Position light at a 40-45° rear angle to emphasize texture, placing white cardboard opposite to reflect it. For glossy plastic, position a softbox directly overhead and use a second light to illuminate the background for contrast.
4. Leather. Position the softbox slightly behind leather items at an acute angle to emphasize texture and make them look expensive. Add front and side reflectors if the lighting is insufficient.

Problems often arise during a photo shoot. That’s normal, because only those who do nothing make no mistakes. The main thing is to figure out how you’ll handle them in the future. An accidental glare, dark spot, or blur can be fixed in an advanced photo editor like Luminar Neo. It brings together retouching, smart removal, replacement, and regeneration tools with built-in AI, all in one place.

Choosing the Right Background and Props 

The choice of background depends on where exactly the photo will be posted. If you’re selling an item on a marketplace, use a plain white or gray background so the buyer can clearly see the product. To create an attractive shot for an ad or social media, choose textures that highlight the product’s character. For example, soap looks great on a wooden board, and a smartwatch looks great against a metal or concrete background.

To prevent photography for advertising from looking empty, add supplementary items. These should convey the product’s properties, composition, or purpose, or be related to them in some way—for example, through design. For instance, it makes sense to place a juicy slice of lemon next to a citrus-scented perfume, and a cup of tea next to a warm winter sweater.

Props should be smaller than the main subject and not overly bright. Follow the “frame and canvas” principle, where extra items exist solely to make the product look better. Contrasting areas grab the viewer’s attention. In a situation where there’s almost no time to examine a product in a feed, this can backfire badly.

Capturing Product Details and Labels Effectively 

When photographing a product, you need to highlight all its features and strengths. If the box has labels such as “Organic” or “Cruelty-Free,” they must be clearly visible. No glare, blurriness, or small print. It’s also a good idea to include barcodes, ingredients, and other information in the shot. However, you can save this for the second, third, or any subsequent photo in the carousel.

To take a high-quality shot like this, a macro lens with an aperture around 8-11, meaning it’s almost fully closed, works best. This will help ensure the text is in sharp focus. The light should be diffused, filling the entire shooting scene. Use softboxes and/or polarizing filters to eliminate glare.

Position the camera parallel to the plane on which the subject rests to avoid perspective distortion. Overall, there’s nothing complicated about creating these kinds of photos. The core is to set up the right conditions and not be afraid to experiment. Prepare a high-quality source image so that you can add unique details or correct minor flaws during post-processing.

Post-Production and Editing Tips 

The final stage of any photo shoot is editing. Using photo retouching software, the photographer must enhance the original images by amplifying the atmosphere and minimizing the impact of any negative features. However, the specific steps will vary depending on the format. Therefore, before opening a photo editor, you need to think carefully about where the photo will be used.

For marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, the most common approach is simply to cut out the subject from the original photo and place it on a plain white background. In some cases, you can further refine the product listing. For example, if you need to advertise a beverage, you can create a gradient background in the same color scheme. Place the bottle in the center, then add a few details: frost patterns, gusts of wind, or scattered fruit.

Images intended for social media or physical displays should be rich in content. They should include objects, effects, color, and text to ensure that your product photography marketing is effective. A white background and a description will only look good if the product’s selling point is minimalism, as in Apple’s smartphone ads. Here are a few more options to improve your product card:

1. Portrait or Object Bokeh. Blur the background of your product photo to create a beautiful depth of field and draw the buyer’s attention.
2. Generative Removal. Use an AI-powered tool to seamlessly remove objects, glare, or surface imperfections with smart texture restoration.
3. AI Upscaling. Increase the resolution and size of your product photos by 2, 4, or 6 times without losing sharpness or pixelation.

However, you don’t have to apply edits manually to every photo. Thanks to the batch editing feature built into advanced photo editors like Luminar Neo, you can quickly edit dozens or even hundreds of images. Simply enhance a single image, then apply the changes to the rest of the group. Using Skylum’s software, you can even merge multiple photos into a single image to show it from different angles.

Comparing Lighting Equipment: Softbox vs Umbrella  

Every beginner photographer wonders how a photo umbrella differs from a softbox. This is hardly surprising, given how similar they look. However, there is a difference, and to take high-quality pics, you need to be aware of it. A softbox creates a closed, directional beam of light without unwanted background glare, which is ideal for product photography.

A photo umbrella, on the other hand, sets up instantly and floods the space with broad, diffused light. It works well for group photos or when photographing large spaces, but in product photography, it’s mainly used as a secondary light source. On its own, a photo umbrella provides good lighting, but it lacks deep shadows and contrast.

Criterion	Softbox	Photography Umbrella
Spill Control	High because light does not hit the walls	Low because light reflects off all surfaces
Grid Compatibility	Yes to narrow and direct light	No, as not supported by design
Setup Speed	Requires time for rod assembly	Instant as it opens like a rain umbrella
Portability and Weight	Heavier and bulkier construction	Ultralight and compact when folded
Catchlight Shape	Square, rectangular, or octagonal	Round to mimic the sun
Best Used For	Product photography and focused portraits	Group photos and fast on-location events

The ideal photographer should have both types of lenses. They address different creative and technical challenges and work well together.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them 

We’ve already discussed that a good product photo is core to selling it effectively. However, this works both ways. To avoid losing customers due to mistakes, you need to identify and skillfully correct them. For example, if you’re photographing a glossy, metallic, or glass item, you should use a polarizing filter and a softbox to eliminate glare.

Reflections may seem like a minor issue until an e-commerce photo editor becomes the only way to remove them from the image. The same applies to color distortion caused by an incorrectly set white balance. The product will appear too yellow or too blue, so adjust the settings manually using a gray card and don’t forget to shoot in RAW mode.

Finalizing Your Product Images for Advertising Use

Before uploading an image to the website, it is technically optimized. First, the physical dimensions are adjusted to meet CMS standards, and the image is converted to the sRGB color profile for accurate color reproduction. Then, the file is compressed to 150-200 KB and converted to the modern WebP format. The only remaining step is to remove the metadata to reduce the file size and thereby increase loading speed for the user.