Professional Amazon Product Photography Hacks for Sellers

Published by Color Experts International August 23, 2022

1. Read Amazon’s Product Photography Guidelines

To start off, you have to get an idea of what Amazon expects your product photos to look like. Luckily Amazon has already set a few ground rules for their product photography requirements. While these may sound intimidating to learn about at first, it’s actually rather easy to follow. So let’s take a look at some important ones below. Remember that these aren’t the whole of it, the rest can be found on Amazon’s official website. So check them out as well.

Images should only be uploaded in TIFF, JPEG, GIF, and PNG file format
The images must be 1000px or greater in dimension
Colour mode should be set in sRGB or CMYK
The file must be named with the product identifier code along with the appropriate file extension.
Products other than books, music, and DVDs should fill about 85% of the image frame.
Books, music, and DVDs should fill 100% of the image frame.

To learn more about the instructions, read our Amazon product upload guidelines.

2. Use a Pure White Background

While white backgrounds might seem a bit too plain in the eyes of some people, most eCommerce platforms have a requirement for product images to have a pure white background. It’s the same in the case of product photography for Amazon. This means that you have to set the RGB values to 255 in all three places.

The reasoning behind this requirement is that white backgrounds provide the maximum amount of focus on the product, minimize any distractions from the background, and also work to highlight the details of the product while making the product look attractive at the same time.

3. Make Sure that Product Details are Fully Visible

Nobody can be convinced to buy a product that does not show transparency in all its details. It is important that the images you take are sharp and in high resolution. It is best to use manual focus in this case. Also, adjusting other features such as the ISO or white shutter speeds may prove to change the whole feel of your product image.

Everybody likes to look at clear details to make sure that there are no defects with the product or to make up their minds about buying the product, so, the best option here is to take your images with professional cameras if possible.

4. Take Photos from Multiple Angles and in Different Orientations

One thing that goes hand in hand with capturing all the details of the product is taking pictures of the product from different angles and in different orientations. This helps the customer understand how the product looks in real life and gives them the clarity needed to buy the product online.

The benefit with Amazon is that you get to have a maximum number of 8 images that you can upload for a product. So you can click many images in all the different orientations and angles while doing product photography and then go on to upload the best-looking ones.

5. Keep Your Product’s Scaling Correct

Customers often complain that they do not understand the product’s size correctly when ordering online and later on get disappointed when they see the product in real life. But this is a completely valid complaint because nobody is sitting with rulers by their side when shopping online and not everyone has the perfect estimation capability to understand the product’s size just by its written dimensions on the product description.

So, it is crucial that you do not make the product look too big or too small. So, the best thing you can do is to click your images at eye level and at a distance with which the product fills in about 85% of your picture frame according to the Amazon product photography requirement.

6. Extra Lights Can Make a Huge Difference

It is no news that lighting plays a major role in photography. While natural lighting may work for the best in some cases, you can take your photography skills up a notch by adding some extra lighting equipment to your photoshoot setup. You can use normal lamps but they may have color undertones in them, so LED lamps can work best in such situations.

But if you are looking for a more professional set-up, you can get yourself a lightbox or a ring light that provides you with the extra amount of brightness needed to make your images look a lot better.

7. Using A Tripod is a Good Practice

While you may trust your hands, sometimes camera shakes are unavoidable. Tripods are an underrated product outside of the photography industry, but professional photographers know their true worth. It makes a significant difference in the image quality by steadying the camera and holding it in place while you keep on capturing images.

Another benefit of using a tripod is that you can get rid of the pain that comes with twisting your neck constantly to get your picture angles correct. Tripods allow you to move your camera to any desired angle while also keeping it steady. So, your product image is of the sharpest quality.

8. Take a Lifestyle Image in a Minimalist Setting

In order to further persuade your customers to buy your product, you have to put some more effort to liven up your background setting by clicking your image in a minimalistic-looking lifestyle setting. We are advising you to keep the setting limited to dull tones in terms of colors so that the focus stays on your product.

Manual focus is best for this type of photoshoot since you can make the rest of the background blur a little while still showing that your product is relevant to use in real-life scenarios. Combining the manual focus with the rule of thirds works even better to give you stunning results.

You can also read another article on Amazon best sellers in clothing, shoes, and jewelry.

9. Product Packaging Makes you More Transparent

Lastly, an image of your packaged product just adds to the customer’s trust in you as a seller. It helps the customer recognize how their parcel is going to look and hence reduces the chances of mistakenly opening up a parcel that could’ve been wrongly delivered to them. Hence you have to deal with lesser customer issues and build the customer’s trust in you at the same time.

So, that was all that we had to talk about professional Amazon product photography tips and guidelines. Hopefully, you found our article informative and helpful. Good luck in your photography journey for Amazon products!