BEFORE AND AFTER: 7 BENEFITS OF EDITING YOUR PRODUCT PHOTOS
When it comes to photography and specifically product photography, I try to pull back the curtain as often as I can to show my work and explain the process. In this post, I’m going to share my top 7 benefits for professionally editing your brand’s product photos along with examples of before and after the editing process.
1. Post-Processing or “Editing” Basic Improvements
Often, an image “out of camera” can look really good, especially if you thought about composition and lighting beforehand. But it can be missing that little bit of extra vibrancy in colors or extra contrast in light and dark that you might want for your brand’s appearance. Even the most basic post-processing photo edit can improve this. On a basic level, you can enhance colors, lighting, contrast, and sharpness with just a few clicks.
2. USING CREATIVE STYLES
Stepping it up a notch from the basic edits, post-processing an image allows you to get creative with it! You can apply a certain edit to your photos to match your brand’s tone and visual style. Think of this like “filters” but with intention and full control of the details and not subject to whatever generic adjustments are provided.
3. BALANCING CREATIVITY WITH REALITY
Style can be great, but when it comes to product photography, you may not want to over do the edits. Potential customers could be very upset if the photo they saw online doesn’t match what the final product. So photos out of camera could look misleading without color correcting, lighting adjustments, and editing. This allows you to balance a creative style while ensuring the product photo matches the actual product.
4. BRAND CONSISTENCY
Taking product photos in the EXACT same conditions every single time is nearly impossible not to mention extremely boring to look at, but taking photos in a photo studio, in a store, and out in the real world, could all yield different looks and could leave the potential customer confused if they’re even looking at the same product. Through editing, the final images can all look consistent even in different conditions building consistency in the brand.
5. BUILDING A UNITED COHESIVE APPEARANCE
Similar to creating image consistency in different conditions, photo editing can build a cohesive look for the brand. Having images on social media, websites, physical mediums, etc, look much more professional when they’re all cohesive and match each other.
6. TRUSTING STRANGERS ONLINE
Having less-than-professional photos may work on social media posts, but when potential customers browse your website, they expect to see professional looking images. Without professional looking e-commerce photos, people may lose trust in the product or brand entirely. Having edited photos can lead to higher click-through and conversion rates.
7. SAVING TIME, MONEY, AND HEADACHES
Being able to edit photos “in post” can ultimately save time too. Sometimes, a photo out of the camera is all kinds of bad! The photo could be underexposed, dull, blurry, and so on, but a good edit can save that otherwise wasted photo! This, in addition to hiring a professional product photographer, can save time and money in the long run letting you get back to running your business and focusing on more important things.
Taking the photo is often only half the battle, and that battle can be won and lost in the post-processing. The editing process is a great chance to enhance basic photo settings like color and lighting, adding a specific creative style, making sure the product and the photo match, build brand consistency, cohesiveness, and trust, and saving otherwise lost photos and ultimately saving time. This all assumes the editing was done correctly. If you’re not confident in your editing ability, but want to take advantage of these benefits of editing, it might be time to hire a professional product photographer. As always, hope you got something from this and if you have questions, hit me up!
Until next time.
Cheers,
Shawn