Guide

How to photograph items for online listings

Good listing photos aren't about an expensive camera — every phone made in the last five years is more than good enough. They're about light and background, and about doing the same thing every time so you stop thinking about it.

This takes about five minutes to set up once. After that, every photo you take comes out right, and any background-removal tool you use — StudioDrop or otherwise — gets a clean edge to work with.

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The six things that matter

1. Good, even light

   Daylight near a window is ideal — the bigger the window, the softer the light. A bright but overcast day is the best light you will ever get for free.

   Avoid harsh direct sun, which blows out highlights and throws hard-edged shadows, and avoid overhead room lights, which cast an unflattering colour and put a shadow directly under the item. If the window light is too directional, hang a white bedsheet or a piece of baking parchment over it — that's a diffuser, and it costs nothing.

   Turn your phone's flash off. It is never the right answer for product photography.

2. A plain, uncluttered backdrop

   A plain table and a plain backdrop is all you need. Many sellers shoot on a white table against a white wall and let the software handle the rest.

   The upgrade that costs about £5: take a large sheet of white card or a roll of lining paper, lay one end flat on the table and curve the other end up against the wall behind. That curve — photographers call it a sweep — removes the horizon line where table meets wall, and it's the single biggest visual improvement available to you.

   What ruins it: patterned tablecloths, wood grain, carpet, other stock in shot, and your kitchen visible in the background.

3. Make the item stand out

   This is the one most people get wrong. Background removal works by finding the edge between your item and what's behind it. If they're a similar tone, there is no edge to find, and no tool on earth will cut it out cleanly.

   • Dark items — shoot on a light backdrop
   • Pale or white items — shoot on something darker, mid-grey is excellent
   • Busy multi-coloured items — plain mid-grey again

   It feels wrong to shoot a white trainer on a grey background when you want a white final image. Do it anyway — the software puts the white behind it afterwards, and the cutout will be perfect instead of ragged.

4. One item, filling the frame

   Hands, props, price tags, stands and packaging all get treated as part of the product. Keep it to the item itself, centred, taking up most of the frame.

   Leave a little breathing room at the edges — if the item is cropped by the frame edge, the cutout will have a flat cut line across it. A centimetre of space all round is plenty.

   Shoot a few angles: front, back, any label or hallmark, and any flaw. Honest flaw photos reduce returns far more than they cost you in sales.

5. Steady and sharp

   Brace your elbows on the table, or use a cheap phone stand. Then tap the item on screen to focus before you shoot — phones habitually focus on the background instead, and a soft photo is unrecoverable.

   If the photo looks too dark or too bright on screen, drag up or down after tapping to focus; that's exposure compensation and it's the only camera control you need.

   Shoot at your phone's main camera, not the ultra-wide — the ultra-wide distorts shapes at close range and is noticeably softer.

6. Tame reflections

   Glossy, glazed, chrome and glass items reflect whatever is in front of them, which is usually you and your phone.

   • Angle the item slightly off-straight so the reflection goes past the camera rather than into it
   • Soften the light — a diffused window is far kinder to shiny things than a bare bulb
   • Wear something dark, so your reflection is a shadow rather than a face
   • For jewellery and watches, move the item rather than the light until the hotspot falls somewhere flattering

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A five-minute setup you can leave standing

The version most resellers settle on, in order of cost:

Common mistakes, ranked by how much they cost you

1. Item and background the same tone. Guarantees a poor cutout. Fix this first.
2. Overhead room lighting. Orange cast, hard shadow under the item, dull colours.
3. Focus on the background. Tap the item. Every time.
4. Clutter in frame. Anything touching the item becomes part of the item.
5. Shooting from above at an angle. Distorts shape. Get level with the item where you can.
6. Flash. Flat, harsh, ugly, and it creates a hard shadow edge.
7. Cropping too tight. Leave a margin, crop later.

Things that are hard for any software

Be realistic about these — no background remover, cloud or on-device, handles them perfectly, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something:

• Fine hair and fur — wigs, fur trim, long-haired soft toys
• Wire, mesh and chain — fine jewellery chain especially
• Clear glass and acrylic — the software can't tell where it ends
• Lace and open weave — hundreds of tiny holes to decide about
• Motion blur — nothing recovers a soft photo

For these, maximum contrast is your only real lever. Shoot glass against mid-grey or black, and shoot fine chain flat against a strongly contrasting surface.

Which shape should the final image be?

Square 1:1 is the safe default — nearly every marketplace crops to it or displays best in it. Beyond that:

• 1:1 square — marketplace listings, catalogue grids
• 4:5 portrait — social feed posts, which get more screen space than square
• 2:3 tall — pin boards
• 9:16 vertical — stories and short-form video
• 16:9 wide — shop banners and web pages

Whatever you pick, keep the long edge around 2000 pixels. Bigger is wasted upload time because platforms re-compress anyway; smaller looks soft when a buyer zooms in.

The same guide is built into both apps behind the "?" button, so it's there when you're actually standing at the table.

Published 7 August 2026 · Written by Connor Clements