In our photo studio we offer product photos for online stores.
We invite you to familiarize yourself with our price list and portfolio in the menu at the top.
This article is intended to answer frequently asked questions.
We encourage you to use the table of contents to omit the obvious issues for you.
Contents
- Own or someone else's photos – that is the question
- Want to order photos? See what we have prepared for you
- Are original product images better seen in the eyes of Google Search?
- How to protect yourself from product photo theft?
- How to prepare photos for the online store?
- What are the best product photo dimensions?
- Why compress photos?
- What should be the size of photos when we want to advertise with Google Shopping Shopping Ads?
- If you do not want to create your own photos, then where to get photos for the online store?
- What is the best way to present clothes in photos?
- Is it worth investing in 360° photos? Their pros and cons
Own or someone else's photos on the online store? Pros and cons of both solutions.
In almost every case, you can take your own photos for the store, but it does not always make sense.
Own photos are most often ordered by manufacturers. The reason is obvious. It is important to maintain high quality photos and present product groups uniformly.
Your own photos are also valuable when you want to stand out from the competition. Photos and graphic design of the online store are like an outfit – it is worth showing yourself from the good side.
You can freely manage your own photos (edit them, create rich graphics for the Internet or for catalogs) and use them in various materials – even in print, which requires high resolution photos.
You can get other people's photos from the Internet or directly from the manufacturer/distributor, but you have to be careful about copyright. Currently, many stores, unfortunately, are not worried about the consequences, but we have been observers of several court disputes (and even claims that have been resolved amicably at a price of PLN 300 for using one photo).
Therefore, you should make sure that:
- You can use them commercially – sometimes you will have to purchase a license for photos. A temporary license is usually more expensive than taking your own product photos.
- do not have watermarks or EXIF/IPTC data about the authorship of the file (such metadata may indicate a competitor's company)
- are of sufficiently good quality for your online store or other online or analog graphics (in print).
If the only photos you can get about a product are of very poor quality and you don't have the means to take professional photographs, the best solution is to temporarily take any of your own photos – until the products earn enough to be able to order better photos later. If you need to improve your photographs, you can always have them retouched to make them look better.
When is it worth ordering or taking your own photos?
- When you do not have sufficiently good graphics from the manufacturer (for example, when they are unattractive or too small and you can see pixels in photos in your store)
- When only watermarked photos are available
- When the product sold is different from the one in the pictures. Customers pay attention to details and even minor differences qualify the product for return due to the non-compliance of the order with the photo – although many people question the thesis that the photo does not matter, and the most important is the product description. The second argument is even more drastic, although imperceptible – customers are much less willing to buy products to which they have doubts. What's worse, only a few people out of 100 will decide to ask for details related to the product. Employees of the online store should immediately correct the descriptions and order corrections to the photos.
- When we want to emphasize the tones of our brand, or just have professional product photographs.
Take photos yourself or order?
The first topic is broad and we do not want to describe it here (on the Internet you will find several sensible guides; and unfortunately hundreds of articles that do not contribute anything…). By the way, we want to interject that good product photographs are not only skills, but also equipment (whose prices start from 5 digits in zlotys).
However , if you want to order photos for the store, you will certainly be interested in the following paragraph.
Do you want to order photos for the online store?
Get 10% off your packshot order with us.
How does it work? Call or write what photos you would like to order and how many pieces. Once the details are arranged, we will send you a quote for approval. And then you use the slogan: "I will ask for the capital of Morocco 2022" and receive an additional 10% discount. We will know that you are our reader and we will reduce the price of your order. You will be guaranteed that it is an authentic discount and not a discount on an artificially inflated price.
And if you don't want to mess around and trust us, just enter the password right away. We value partner relations.
Are original product images better seen in the eyes of Google Search?
There is no clear answer, because a lot depends on the constantly changing algorithms of the Google search engine.
However, if you observe valuable traffic on your website in Google Images, or most queries display Rich Snippets with your attractive photos , it is a signal that it is definitely worth improving your store with unique photos.
It is also worth taking care of photos when Google displays photos of competing stores, and our photos are not visible there, although we are right next to the competition.
How to protect yourself from product photo theft
Unfortunately, effective protection does not exist. But there are many options to protect your photos.
Let's just say that each level of security acts like a sieve – it protects potential thieves from ignorance. Many people who copy photos simply download them from competitors. If these are photos provided by the manufacturer, this will usually be acceptable.
We:
- prevent right-clicking on photos (the downside is that it is difficult for customers to download photos when, for example, they want to share a photo with someone else, or download it to a computer or phone)
- hide the photo itself in the page code so that it is harder to download (as Instagram does)
- add a watermark on photos (usually the best and simplest method of protection, but not always acceptable)
- add a script that prevents downloading image files from our website
Unfortunately, these three methods require costly programmer intervention and may be inconvenient for our customers.
Still, we will not avoid a situation when a thief will be able to bypass our security or simply take a photo of our photo (i.e. take a print screen). Then we have contact with the person violating our rights and possible court proceedings.
If there is no contact with the infringer of the photos (or other content), it is worth reporting the stolen materials to Google – use the DMCA form: https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=pl
How to check if someone is stealing our product photos?
Unfortunately, this is a rather tedious process that requires repeating it. We simply go to Google Images and search with the help of our photos to see if anyone has used them on their websites.
The process is time-consuming, but it's worth doing it every now and then if you care about uniqueness.
This action can be partially automated using www.copytrack.com
It allows you to regularly check 500 photos uploaded by us. It is not much, but always something. The downside is the cost of the program.
How to prepare photos for the online store?
It is worth sticking to two rules, which we describe below:
- Unify the dimensions of product photos and stick to their appropriate size
- compress product photos balancing between the weight of the file and its visual quality
It should be emphasized that all the following requirements are worth implementing if your store engine allows it. In this topic, it is worth contacting the developer or technical support of the store platform.
What are the best product photo dimensions?
It depends strictly on the online store.
Most of the photos in stores are square (1:1 aspect ratio) and most often such proportions are handled by stores without any problem. We can insert a large photo and then the store will automatically set the right size to match the photo.
Tip: it is worth that all photos in the store have the same proportions. You will avoid strange photo layouts, large background bars between photos – in case the store engine does not properly crop thumbnails.
Important:
The general rule is that you should insert photos into the online store in the size in which they are displayed.
What does that mean?
Let's say your photo thumbnails are 430 x 430 pixels in your store
(how do I check it?: In a web browser, right-click on the photo and select Investigate at the bottom. Then, in the bottom icon bar, select the first icon on the left, then hover over the product image. You'll see the dimensions of the photo you specify.)
As you can see in the image, the displayed image is 430 x 430 pixels, even though the page has a 500 x 500 pixel image loaded. Any larger photo would also be reduced to the dimensions indicated above.
If the photos zoom in when clicked, it would be worth at least 1000 x 1000 pixels. This is a good value to see the details. It is also friendly to the loading time of our website because it does not weigh more than 400 kilobytes.
Keep the "weight" of photos in the online store as low as possible – why it is worth compressing photos
This is the size of each image file in kilobytes.
In order for the website to work as quickly as possible, we should load as light photos as possible. Images of 4000 x 4000 pixels, weighing a few Megabytes will be far too large. Some people will wait a few (teen!) seconds too long for the product to load.
Therefore, photos matching the displayed files should be sent to the store.
It is also worth considering photo compression. This reduces their file weight with minimal or invisible quality degradation.
We recommend trying live on the program https://shortpixel.com/online-image-compression
This is a free program in which, after uploading photos, you will see how much the weight of the file has decreased, as well as what the visual difference is. If it is significant, reduce the level of compression to get a better image.
Visual differences in photo compression can be seen mainly in tonal transitions (gradients) or color-rich products. If you see uninteresting graphic artifacts (such ugly spots) it is worth staying with the original photo.
Image size when you want to advertise in Google Shopping ads
Let's start with the fact that Google's guidelines are constantly changing – you can find the current requirements on this page: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324350?hl=pl
Google in its guidelines for Shopping ads (Google Shopping) recommends the use of photos:
- Photos of products other than clothing: At least 100 x 100 pixels.
- Clothing photos: At least 250 x 250 pixels.
- No photo can be larger than 64 megapixels.
- No photo can be larger than 16 MB.
Photos must be on a neutral, monochromatic, not necessarily white background.
They also cannot contain inscriptions and graphic additions (e.g. stamps super price, free delivery)
It's worth following these guidelines, because nowadays Google Shopping ads often generate some of the highest revenues in stores (this is our opinion based on conversations with customers for 2021).
If you do not want to create your own photos, then where to get photos for the online store?
Unfortunately, the only sensible option is to obtain photos from producers and distributors. It's good to have permission for an email.
All other options, such as copying photos from the competition are not entirely legal. Because the producer can share these photos only with one entity, or grant them under license.
If you have found information somewhere that it is worth taking photos from stock, we strongly advise against it. These will simply be different photos and "damage to electricity" for such action.
What are the proven methods for presenting clothes on the Internet?
The most popular method is to take ghost product photos. These are photos on an invisible mannequin that emphasize the shape of the clothes, and at the same time are a packshot, i.e. a photo on a white background (or other neutral). These types of product photos are ordered by most of our customers.
The collection is certainly complemented by photos on the model. Although a large part of stores use photos on people, packshots always accompany them.
The next forms are photos on a hanger and laid on the ground – flatshot
You can order all these photos from us. Realizations can be found in the clothes photos section
PS: see how to get 10% discount
Is it worth investing in 360° photos?
Every entrepreneur knows that the investment must pay off. So the basic question is: "what will 360 photos give us"?
Our experience shows that most industries do not need 360 photos, because they are an expensive addition to product photography – the more so because the Internet is still dominated by photos of one shot.
Another downside, this time of lesser importance, is that you must have the appropriate software in the store that will correctly display such photos – preferably with the possibility of control by the user. A simpler way is to present a video composed of 360 photos – usually videos can be displayed without any problems in most modern store engines.
Let's also remember that the application for playing 360 photos weighs subsequent kilobytes when loading the page of our product. People with slower internet, limited mobile access can wait longer for the entire page to load. Therefore, these types of photos should load last or turn on only after starting the 3D photo.
360 photos are certainly useful when selling technical products whose important details are clearly placed on the entire item. Of the consumer products, these will be, for example, laptops, cars, cameras, as well as weapons. It is also worth using them in the sale of luxury products, the margin of which is so large that the cost of producing photos will be a negligible fraction of the cost.
The obvious argument is to stand out from the competition, which does not offer such photos.
Pros
- attractive presentation of products
- the ability to show all details
- User control when rotating the photo (if possible)
Cons
- high price for the product
- requires installation of additional software on the store
- Some phones still have problems with 360 formats, which can cause frustration or slow down the loading of the product page
- They can slow down the product page when the user has worse internet
