10 min read All You Need to Know about Product Photography Services: A Comprehensive Overview
Photography studios provide a variety of different services. In this article I will shed light on the following services:
- Standard Services: The Foundation of Every Photography Studio
- Additional Services: Extra Services Provided by Leading Studios
- Advanced Services: Advanced Offerings from Full-Service Photography Studios
Understanding what these services entail will enable you to better evaluate studios.
1. Standard Services :
The following is a list of standard services that all product photography studios must provide.
- Tabletop product photography
- Image editing and tweaking
- Formatting, watermarking, and delivery of photos
Tabletop Photography:
Standard tabletop photography is offered by most product photography studios. The term standard refers to the photography of products that are less than 50 pounds in weight and can fit on a 4x4 table. The products that are larger and heavier than 50 pounds usually need to be photographed using specialty equipment, and require more studio space, and additional resources to handle the shoot. Not all studios have the capability to photograph these products.
Image Editing:
Editing services are a must-have for all studios to tweak the images they take of your products in order to make them perfect. Standard editing usually includes cropping, tone adjustment, alignment, and shadow removal. You might have to edit the images that were produced in-house. If the studio you are considering for your product photography does not offer image editing services you can find one doing a quick Google search.
Formatting:
In terms of formatting, customers usually request multiple image formats for their internal and external uses. The most common formats are as follows:
- Master format: It requires no resizing and is in tif format having 300 dpi.
- Industry-compliant Format: It is a square image of 1,500 x 1,500 pixels and is in jpeg format having 72 dpi.
- Customer-specific format: It is 1,500 x 1,500 pixels on the longest side and is in tif format having 300 dpi.
Watermarking:
Most studios offer watermarking as part of their formatting process. This involves taking a transparent png (usually the studio’s name or logo) and applying it to the whole or partial image as an overlay.
You should, however, consider the pros and cons of watermarking before you decide to do so.
Pros:
- The purpose of a watermark is to protect your images from being used by your competitor. As the images will have your brand watermarked on them, this will deter your competitors from using them on their websites.
- The watermark protects your investment. Creating images is costly and you would not want your competitors to steal and leverage your investment.
Cons:
- Using a watermark may sometimes obscure the image of the product making it difficult for the consumer to see the product. This can seriously impair the effectiveness of your images and your marketing efforts. If your consumers have issues seeing your products clearly, they may turn to your competitor’s website and end up buying their product instead of yours. Or they might mistake your product for some other product, resulting in more product returns. Both of these things are harmful to your business.
- In order to address these issues, it is advisable that you watermark only a part of the image, ideally a corner. This will definitely help with the obscuring issue but competitors may still steal your images, remove or crop the watermark, and use them on their site.
Delivery:
After the studio is done formatting your images it will deliver them to you. Most studios either give you access to your images via their FTP server or upload your images directly to your company’s FTP server. The cost incurred in the formatting and the delivery of the images is usually included in the price. If you need the images on a portable hard drive or DVDs you will be most likely charged extra.
2. Additional Services Some Studios Provide:
The additional services that larger studios offer are as follows:
- Platform photography (larger and heavier products)
- Apparel photography
- Food Photography
Large / Heavy Product Platform Product Photography:
Photography of large or heavy products is somewhat difficult as the studio may need more space to accommodate the staging and photographs of the products, platform or floor studio setup, camera equipment capable of wide-angle shots, and bigger lightning equipment.
Apparel Photography:
Taking pictures of colts using mannequins requires minimal preparation and is not that difficult so it is a service that is offered by many studios. What is more complex are clothes that are worn by models where the styling and matching with other clothes really matter. Then apparel photography becomes more challenging and becomes a specialized service that is offered by specific studios only.
Food Photography:
Food photography can range from basic to complex (requiring elaborate preparation and sets). Basic food photography includes photography of the products found in a grocery store. Food photography becomes more complex when you need high-volume production, images of fresh food require styling and staging, and the images require elaborate sets.
3. Advanced Services Specialty or Full-service Studios Provide:
Advanced services are typically offered by two types of studios.
Full-service studio that offers a complete suite of product photography services from basic to full-set to lifestyle photography. They have the capacity and the capability to handle projects of all sizes and complexities.
Specialty studios do not offer a complete suite of services but instead offer one or more specific services that they are excellent at.
Here are 5 types of advanced photography services:
- 360 product photography: Creating an interactive image that can be rotated 360 degrees so that the viewer can rotate the image on a single axis. 360 product photography needs highly specialized equipment, software, and yes expertise also.
- 3D product photography: This type of photography is similar to 360 photography but in these images, the viewer can rotate the image on multiple axes.
- Photography requiring sets: Sets can be elaborate or basic depending on the type of products. These products can be home furnishing and décor products, office furniture, and appliances.
- Lifestyle photography: Models demonstrating the use of products or how the products look when they are being used.
Once you decide which type of studio you are looking to partner with for your product, you’ll need to take a look at the pricing of the selected studios to see what offerings fit your budget the best and you are all set!