How to Edit Product Photos for an eCommerce Store?

E-commerce sales will cross $6.3 trillion in 2024. The number of e-commerce stores is growing (26.6 million), and so are customers. But to earn more revenue and increase conversion rates, product visuals play an important role. You might have awesome product visuals, but customers rarely visit or purchase them. 

Are you worried about how to drive more sales and stand out from the competition? In this article, you’ll discover revenue-worthy ideas on how to edit product photos for website success and improve your eCommerce store’s performance.

Why is Product Photo Editing Important?

As we all know product photo editing refers to enhancing and improving digital images of products for boosting sales and conversion rates. Its ultimate goal is to make high-quality and professional images for eCommerce, social media, and other marketing platforms.

As per statistics, retail e-commerce sales are estimated to achieve $6.3 trillion worldwide in 2024. Do you want to convert more potential consumers to your businesses? ECommerce-friendly and professional product images convince people to buy from you without physically seeing them. 

For more details, let’s dive into it together!

• First impressions matter: High-quality images reflect the professionalism and credibility of your business. Edited photos are more polished and attractive – perfect color, contrast, and sharpness entice customers to make a purchase. 
• Consistency and branding: Professional and consistent product visuals support your eCommerce business and reinforce branding. Removing or altering the background can make products stand out from the competitors. Also, editing removes imperfections like lighting issues, shadows, or blemishes from the products.  

• Power of visuals in eCommerce: When it comes to online shopping, customers rely on visuals to make a purchase decision. Hand-drawn editing serves as the virtual bridge between the potential buyer and the product. If you notice top fashion brands, you explore their product images get higher click-through rates and lower bounce rates – resulting in Google’s high rankings.
• Build trust and credibility: When your product visuals provide consumers in-store experience, they get confidence to rely on your business or services. High-resolution and professionally edited images are crucial to build credibility among the customer base. 
• Highlight product features: Editing photos is crucial to guide consumers to see the product from different angles, assess its features, demonstrate its uniqueness, and more. 360-degree product visuals are more popular because it highlight products best outlook – provide a quick product information. 
• Reduce return rates: When a shopper gets the wrong items, they immediately lose trust and switch to competitors. Return rates also happen for mismatched product deliveries. Photo editing, like color correction, background removal, and others works as a lifesaver.
• Boost social media marketing: Pixel-perfect visuals can be easily shared on social media platforms and leveraged for effective social media marketing. Also, it emphasizes mobile shopping compatibility and ensures an attractive experience for consumers. 
• Improve conversion rates: Compelling product visuals evoke emotions and create a sense of desire that boosts engagement and conversion rates. 
• Encourage sharing: Edited product images you can use on your product pages and social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. When you post product images on social media, followers can share those with others. This converts your followers into your promotion crew. 
• Add SEO benefits: High-quality visuals with SEO information introduce more potential traffic. For example, Alt text, image optimization, adding descriptive file names, and others can drive more organic traffic to your eCommerce store.

Now that you’ve acknowledged the importance of product photo editing, it’s time to shine your visuals. 

How to Edit Product Photos for an Online Store: 11 Easy Steps

Shooting and uploading product photos to your website is pretty simple. But to increase your online store sales, pixel-perfect and professional product editing must entice potential customers. Here are 11 surefire ways to improve your eCommerce store product photography. 

1. Use the Best Photo Editing Software

In the eCommerce era, photos are powerful tools to showcase product features, services, and brands’ uniqueness. However, to make professional and sales-worthy product photos, you must select the best free photo editing app for products or photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is rich with photo editing and image enhancement features, but it requires professional skills. 

On the other hand, AI software often struggles with photo editing feature limitations, making it difficult to fully meet consumer expectations when it comes to how to edit ecommerce photos effectively. However, by hiring the best product photo editing services, you gain valuable time to focus on business growth while ensuring your final product images are visually appealing and professional.

2. Crop Images to Fit Within a Shape

Amazon states that the product image should fill the image frame so that shoppers can see your product better without zooming in, squinting, or clicking through—regardless of the device they use. For instance, Huda Beauty effectively showcases their main products on a white background, filling the frame and removing unnecessary elements. 

This not only guides the audience to the actual product outlook but also reassures them of the product’s quality. Additionally, center-aligning the product enhances its visual appeal. Lastly, maintaining a coherent shape and size across all images ensures a professional and consistent look.

3. Remove the Background from the Image

When you search Amazon product photo editing hacks or how to edit photos for eCommerce, you’ll see that removing backgrounds steals the audience’s attention from the actual product visuals. The best solution is to photograph the product on a white background because it reduces the file size and is easily transparent.

However, the background of an image is vital to give photo context. It allows us to eliminate undesired or unnecessary objects and make products attractive. You can add effects like shadow, reflections, and others that suit products most.

4. Add a White Background

When editing product photos for a website or app, white backgrounds add many benefits to hero and main images. They make it easy for shoppers to see products, compare items, and more. For example, MAC Cosmetics uses a white background to highlight its product details and make it easy to finalize what options are right for you.

You can utilize different white combinations, such as Hylo Athletics or Nike products, instead of stark white. But ensure the combinations convey a sense of professionalism, clarity, and sophistication.

5. Adjust Image Contrast and Color Enhancement

Understanding the importance of contrast and color enhancement is key to improving the visibility and appeal of your product photos. These editing techniques make dark areas more visible and enhance the overall visibility of your images, especially underexposed or low-light ones. By mastering these techniques, you can effectively polish the brightness and exposure levels to showcase product details, boosting your confidence in your editing skills.

Also, color enhancement makes products more vivid and realistic. This hack is important in product photography, where vibrant colors can impact the visuals. On the contrary, increasing contrast and saturation help to portray a more dramatic or lively feel.

6. Using Color Change Edits Instead of Taking Multiple Photos

One of the most essential factors of product image editing for eCommerce is color changing. Instead of taking multiple shots of the same product with a different color, you can edit product colors to get your desired ones. All you need to do is capture one photo and apply post-processing to create others.

For example, True Classic represents several cloth color variants in one image so that consumers pick their favorite one instantly. Some other clothing fashion brands keep the same models, styles, and product look which not only saves time but also reduces the investment needed for multiple photoshoots.

7. Create Natural Shadow In Photoshop

What is the biggest challenge of eCommerce product photo editing? Adding realistic and eye-soothing natural shadows gives dimension to the lifeless, flat white background images. One study states that 75% of online shoppers rely on product photos before making a purchase decision. Making a real and dramatic one without advanced Photoshop skills will be challenging. By outsourcing product image editing services, you explore:

• Drop shadow: These shadows are helpful if photographers miss during the shooting time. For example, Farmacy’s product shadows add complement and make it more life-like. 
• Reflection shadow: These shadows are added during post-production to create a dramatic style for your product photos. Luxury products like jewelry, perfume, cosmetics, and others are often represented with realistic shadows to provide an in-person experience. For example, COSRX uses reflection shadows for its product line, which gives a feel of three-dimensional visuals.

8. Remove Mannequins from Product Images

Mannequins are mostly used to showcase clothes details, i.e., fittings, styles, fabrics, and more. Though mannequins help make clothes more appealing and realistic-looking, they distract the audience from the primary subject. So, removing them can create a cleaner and more professional aesthetic.

However, the “ghost mannequin” or “invisible mannequin” edit image technique is popular among apparel product visuals. If you have enough budget, you can hire models to showcase your products, such as Calvin Klein, Under Armor, or other top clothing brands.

Pro Tip: You can add 360-degree product visuals through post-production techniques and skyrocket your eCommerce sales.

9. Get Wrinkles Out of Clothes

Wrinkle-free clothing looks more polished and professional, which reflects your brand’s authenticity to the target audience. Wrinkles distort the true shape, fit, patterns, textures, and drapes of clothing that raise questions about your service or product quality. Sometimes, you may iron and steam thoroughly before shooting, but wrinkles are inevitable. 

By utilizing post-production techniques, you can present clothing in a way that boosts customer confidence. Neat and wrinkle-free apparel not only looks more professional but also helps customers envision how the clothing will fit into their styles or other items in their wardrobe.

10. Fix Lighting Glitches

The average eCommerce purchase return rate was 17.6% in 2023. That means for every $1 billion in sales, the average retailer received $145 million in returns. There are many reasons behind this, but the most common is receiving different products. 

Lighting is important in providing the actual product visuals and reducing return rates. Proper and effective lighting starts at the photoshoot, but sometimes, it ends up with some errors—maybe the weather, glare, or unwanted reflections. With photo editing services, you can overcome these issues perfectly and hone in on the exact feel you resonate with. 

11. Optimize Images for SEO

Semrush states that over one-third of eCommerce traffic comes from searches. So, it’s important to optimize product photos for SEO. It might be:

• Using clear and descriptive image file names like IMG_345.jpg or “sky-blue-cotton-tops.jpg.”
• Adding alt text to all product photos, 
• Using targeted and descriptive relevant keywords, 
• Optimizing image file sizes to ensure fast loading speed,
• Using responsive images,
• Adding captions and detailed product descriptions,
• Using descriptive image titles and more. 

When resizing images to optimize website loading times, ensure the quality remains the same. There are many ways to reduce image file size without affecting the quality. You can also use free tools like TinyPNG.

Conclusion

Every eCommerce seller dreams of skyrocketing sales and getting more organic traffic. Investing in high-quality photos and editing services is one of the most effective hacks to take your product visuals to the next level. Through online shopping, consumers can’t touch the product, but they can feel it and get relevant product information.

So, to steal their heart at first glance, there is no alternative to professional visuals. Try to fix defects, remove distractions, provide actual product colors, and create eye-catching visuals. 

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