Shooting all of your products for your ecommerce website not only takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money as well. You’ll need equipment such as professional cameras, lighting, lenses, a studio, staff, and at least one whole day to shoot everything.
A lot of people think that because of all the expenses that they incur with product photography, they can cut costs by scrapping photo retouching.
We’re debunking that myth by showing you how photo retouching actually saves you money down the line. Instead of adding to your costs, it actually drives them down – all while increasing the quality and productivity of your product photo shoot.
1. Lowers return rates
Unlike having a physical store where customers can actually hold, touch, and even try on your products, ecommerce sites only have product photos to rely on, which makes it crucial for product photos to look as true to life as possible. Estimates show that nearly 15-30% of online purchases are returned, compared to only 8-10% for traditional retail. This difference in return rates are damaging for retailers because they lower the profit margins and add to the overall costs of your business (i.e. shipping costs, restocking, etc.).
Professional photo retouching helps reduce returns by ensuring your product is represented as accurately as possible. Photo retouchers can color match your photos to ensure that the lighting, camera settings, and other factors do not alter the color of your product in the photo.
Photo retouching can also save you time (and extra studio rental hours) by editing the color of a product instead of shooting it multiple times to show its different colors. This also guarantees your photos will be consistent all throughout.
Photo retouching can also help your customers get a better gauge of what your products will look like when worn without having to hire a model or having a model take away focus from your products. This is done using a technique called the ghost mannequin effect. During the shoot, you will display your products on your mannequin so that it will fall more naturally and show its true shape when worn, and photo retouchers can have the mannequin edited out in post-production.
Basically, the more you show accurate your photos represent your product, the less likely they are to return it – leaving you with more satisfied customers who will no doubt become repeat customers, and hopefully, tell more people to patronize your brand.
2. Saves you time during the shoot
As we’ve previously said, shooting products takes a lot of time. Whether you’re cataloguing all of your products for your ecommerce website or doing a more editorial type photo shoot, getting your products to look perfect in every shot takes time and effort.
For instance, if you choose to shoot your products flat, photographers will typically pin them onto a foam board to minimize shadows while creating more natural shapes. The problem is, this leads to visible pins if you’re not careful. Post-production can easily remove the pins, saving you (and the stylist fixing the clothes) time during the shoot. This way, you can shoot more layouts and products in less time.
3. Optimizes images
This is a benefit of photo retouching that most people often overlook. Edits such as background removal, cropping, margins, alignment, and even image compression all help make your images look more consistent, professional, and usable for your website. Background removal is also a must for many online selling platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Rakuten. It reduces an image’s file size, helping the page load faster.
Compressing images will improve your site’s loading speed, and faster load speeds have been found to lead to more conversions and more satisfied customers.
Not every company has the capacity to hire a team of professional in-house photo retouchers. Paper Boat Creative offers high end ecommerce photo retouching services that bring your images to the next level. We’ve build a solid portfolio, with clientele consisting of several popular ecommerce brands such as sportswear, jewelry, apparel, and more. Each image is carefully crafted and tailored, and we promise you we never use one-size-fits-all approaches for any of our work.
Tell your brand’s story with Paper Boat Creative today.
