Product photography for small businesses: a practical guide

Online, the photograph is the product. A customer cannot pick up a basket, smell a bag of coffee or feel the weight of a ceramic bowl, so the pictures have to answer their questions. Baymard Institute's usability testing found that 56% of users began exploring product images before reading the title, description or anything else on the page.¹

Poor images cost more than a sale. In the same research programme, users often judged pixelated images to be worse than having no image at all, and some concluded that a site with poor photos did not care about its products.² That disappointment can spread to the brand as a whole. Good e-commerce photography is therefore not decoration; it is the main way you explain what you sell.

Before you light anything, write a short shot list. Google Merchant Center lets sellers add up to 10 additional images per product and describes their typical use: showing the product from different angles, staged or in use, close-up details, the contents of a box and the parts of a bundle.³ That is a useful checklist even if you sell only through your own website or social media.

Do not skip scale. Baymard found that 42% of users try to work out a product's size from its images, and that people struggle to picture measurements such as ounces or cubic feet.¹ Its recommendation is at least one "in scale" image: the product in a real setting, worn by a person or next to objects of a known size.¹ A typical set looks like this:

• Main image: the whole product, front on, on a clean background.
• Two or three other angles, including the back and side.
• Close details: texture, stitching, labels and ingredients.
• Scale: the product in a hand, on a person or in a room.
• Lifestyle: the product being used in a real setting.
• Packaging and contents, if customers will receive a box.

You do not need a studio. You need consistency. Adobe's product photography guidance recommends shooting product-only images on a solid background such as white or black paper or fabric, and always working with a tripod, because product photography is about consistency and precision.⁴ A tripod also lets you keep the same position and framing across a whole range, so your catalogue looks like one family.

Light is where most home shoots fail. The same guidance cautions that window light can change quickly: when a cloud passes, you are suddenly working in different light.⁴ It suggests softboxes or a light tent to create soft, diffused light that reduces harsh shadows, and keeps natural light for lifestyle shots, where reflectors can bounce it back into the scene.⁴ In our own practice, a large window, a white sheet as a diffuser and a piece of white card as a reflector go a long way for small items.

Marketplaces and shopping platforms have their own image rules, so read them before the shoot, not after. Google Merchant Center asks for a main image that gives a clean, unobstructed view of the item, with the product filling between 75% and 90% of the frame.⁵ It does not allow promotional text, prices or calls to action on the image, stock photo watermarks, borders, or placeholder images that do not show the actual product.⁵

Size matters too. Google will require images of at least 500 x 500 pixels for all products from 31 January 2027, and recommends about 1500 x 1500 pixels or more.³⁵ Images made with generative AI must keep the metadata that shows they were AI-generated, such as the IPTC DigitalSourceType tag.⁵ White background photos are not compulsory on every platform, but a plain white or light grey background meets most rules and keeps the focus on the product.

Clean catalogue shots tell people what a product is. Lifestyle images tell them what it is like to own it. Google describes lifestyle images as showing products in a natural and authentic setting, such as clothing worn by a model or furniture staged in a room, and lets sellers add up to five per product.⁶ Even here, it does not allow promotional text, overlays, logos or borders on the image.⁶

Keep lifestyle photos honest. Show the real colour, the real size and the real finish, because a beautiful photo of something a customer does not receive leads to returns and poor reviews. If you sell handmade goods, a photo of the maker at work can also explain why each piece is slightly different.

Edit for accuracy, not fantasy. Adobe's guidance suggests starting with brightness and exposure before adjusting white balance and colour.⁴ Correct colour matters: if a customer orders a deep green bag and receives a blue one, the photograph was wrong. Use the same edit settings across a series so products sit together well on a page.

Then make the images easy to inspect and find. Baymard recommends several high-resolution images per product and zoom that reveals more detail rather than a blurry enlargement.² Google's image guidance asks for high-quality photos placed near relevant text, short but descriptive file names rather than names like image1.jpg, and accurate alt text.⁷ It also notes that images are often the largest part of a page's size, so compress them to keep pages fast.⁷

• A shot list for each product, written before the shoot
• A clean main image with the product filling most of the frame
• Other angles, close details and packaging
• At least one photo that shows real size
• Camera on a tripod and the same set-up for the whole range
• Soft, steady light and a plain background
• No text, prices, watermarks or borders on marketplace images
• Colour checked against the real product, descriptive file names and alt text