A must-read for Amazon sellers! A step-by-step guide to taking clear and professional product photos with your phone

Before you start taking product photos, you need to prepare a few things:

A dirty lens will reduce the quality and clarity of the picture, even if there are only fingerprints on it. It is recommended that sellers can use a simple microfiber cloth (such as a glasses cloth) to wipe it. Try not to use paper towels or clothes to wipe the phone lens, because some fibers in the paper towel may leave tiny scratches on the phone camera lens.

Flash is great if you’re taking pictures in dimly lit areas, but product photography is generally done in bright light, so flash isn’t necessary.

Most smartphones have a range of different camera modes and settings that you can change when taking product photos. On an iPhone 7, for example, you’ll want to turn on HDR when taking photos, which helps balance the photo and provide a clearer picture.

You can also turn off the live capture feature, as the format of the pictures taken is not easy to view on a computer. Overall, setting up the phone's camera is very simple, just turn off the flash, turn on HDR, and turn off live capture.

Sellers do not need to rent a professional studio to take beautiful product photos. They can create high-quality pictures for their stores by using the available space. As shown below:

When it comes to product photography, lighting is so important that it can ruin the overall feel of the image.

While professional lighting equipment will really enhance the quality of your product images, products shot in natural light can also be great. If you don’t want to spend money on lighting equipment, then natural light is a good option. But when you shoot in natural light, there are a few things to keep in mind:

(1) Direction of sunlight

Before you start shooting, always look at the direction of the sun, it can change at any time of day so you’ll want to keep an eye on this. When taking product photos in general, it’s best not to have direct sunlight on your product.

(2) Color temperature

Natural light can affect the color temperature of your photos, and color temperature will also change depending on the time of day and weather.

The photo above was taken in the early morning, and the white paper below looks a bit blue, which is a result of the color temperature of the natural light. If the photo was taken later in the day, the white paper would appear brighter.

(3) Strength

Essentially, the amount of natural light will determine how bright your image is. When you look at the shadows in your image, you’ll be able to tell how strong the light is. If you see a clear contrast between the shadows and your product, then the natural light is probably strong, whereas if you see a clear contrast between the shadows and your product, then the natural light is probably not as strong. You can experiment to find the right balance of light intensity to get the best results in your product photos.

Once you’ve decided on the location and lighting, it’s time to grab your product and your smartphone to take your product photos. Here are some things you need to pay attention to:

You may have heard the term “less is more,” but when it comes to taking product photos, the exact opposite is true. You need to take as many photos as possible to ensure you have at least one you like.

Smartphone cameras are very easy to focus, you just need to tap on the product you want to focus on and the camera will focus on its own.

The zoom feature on a smartphone is different from the zoom feature on a high-end DSLR camera. When you use zoom on a smartphone, the end result is a significant degradation in the image quality. This is because the smartphone does not actually zoom in, instead, it simply crops the image. You can achieve this by using professional photo editing software.

One of the best pieces of advice when it comes to product photography is to find an angle that works and make sure your camera stays in the same position throughout the shoot. Consistency is key with product photos, so keep your camera in one place and only move the product around to make your product photos look more professional.

Take ASOS as an example:

If you look closely at the product images, you’ll notice that the lighting always falls on the model from the same angle, which means the model is the one moving, not the camera. By performing a series of clever edits and crops on the product images, each image looks more professional.

There are plenty of free apps you can use to edit your product photos on your smartphone, like Flickr, Snapseed, and even Instagram (all of which are available on iOS and Android). But when it comes to editing features and ease of use, VSCO stands out. It gives you everything you need to turn standard photos into professional photos, perfect for your e-commerce store. After downloading VSCO, you'll need to import your images before you can start editing.

The picture above is one of the product pictures taken after the settings mentioned above. Below I will walk you through the exact steps you need to take to achieve the final result. The first thing you need to do is to make the image a little brighter. The color temperature of the image is very low at the beginning. To do this, you can use VSCO’s exposure tool to increase the exposure.

Next, you need to increase the contrast, warm up the image, and help the sunglasses stand out from the white background.

At this point, the photo has improved considerably, but there is still some blue tint that needs to be removed. So the white balance function can be used to slightly increase the magenta and yellow levels, which can help make the background of the product photo cleaner.

The image above is pretty good, but one of the main features of the sunglasses is the neon green temples, so we want to emphasize that. The best way to achieve this is to increase the saturation of the image slightly.

The next step is to crop out some of the white space around the product and make sure it’s centered in the image, so continue using VSCO’s adjustment tools.

Here we just need to modify the product image by increasing the sharpness:

The next step is to save the final image, as follows:

The whole process took less than 20 minutes to create, and overall the result is satisfactory, but the reality is: product pages need multiple pictures, and if you are trying to convince users to buy, then you want them to see the product as much as possible. You can change a new shooting location, switch the background of the picture, and make the same edits on these pictures on VSCO:

The rollable temples and foldable frame are one of the main selling points of this product, so it is important that the product photos you take show this selling point.

It’s good to take 5 product photos to highlight the product highlights, but to highlight more product details, you can add short videos. British clothing e-commerce ASOS adds product videos to their products to let shoppers understand the appearance and dress of their clothes:

Finally, I hope sellers know that your buyers are visual animals, so create beautiful pictures and videos to attract them to convert and buy.

Text✎ Fang Xiaoling/

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