I’ve come a long way since using a white cardboard box as my product photo backdrop.
Back then, I had no idea what I was doing. And when I say no idea, I mean it. I was clueless.
Looking back, I can’t believe that I would literally wait until the sun was out so I could get good natural lighting!
It’s fair to say my first product photos on my iPhone were terrible.
At the time, it was the best I could do. Now, it’s crazy that I thought they were good enough to upload.
But I’m glad I uploaded them anyway because if I had been a perfectionist, I wouldn’t have even listed my products on eBay.
And my business wouldn’t exist today.
So here’s the little lesson I’ve taught myself just from typing this out:
Start scrappy, then iterate.
Start at the bottom, improve a tiny bit every single day, and over a long enough time, you’ll win.
Anyway, let’s get into my process before I start sounding like a motivational speaker on YouTube.
Use a White Background
I try to take all of my photos on a light, single-colour background (which is almost always white).
There are two reasons for this:
- It’s easier to remove the background (using the tool I’ll show you later)
- Selling platforms like Amazon and Google Shopping require it in their guidelines
You might prefer a different background for your website based on your branding style. I choose to use white so I can use the same photos across all platforms. It just makes my life a little bit easier.
In my opinion, natural light is the best way to show the true colours of your products.
Lightboxes can help, but my products were an awkward size for the amount of money I was willing to spend on one.
At the end of the day, it comes down to your personal preferences and budget.
Take photos from multiple angles and distances (avoiding using camera zoom so your image stays clear).
Upload Product Photos from iPhone to PC
Okay, so now you’ve taken your product photos, it’s time to upload them to your computer, ready for editing.
If you’ve got a MacBook, the Apple airdrop feature is so good for quick and easy uploads.
One thing to note here:
Most Shopify stores use images in JPEG or PNG format.
However, since the release of iOS11, your photos will be in the new HEIC format (High-Efficiency Image Container) and I’ve got no idea what that means.
Anyway, we’re going to need to convert the images from HEIC to JPG if we want to use them on Shopify. I guess this will probably change in the future.
For now, use a converter tool like this one here: https://heictojpg.com/
But there’s a little iPhone hack to avoid converting all of your files.
I’ve found out that you can change your iPhone settings to go back to taking photos in JPG format.
All you have to do is go to Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible. Sorted!
Remove Background
This is my favourite image-based tool.
That makes it sound like I’ve created my own list of Top 100 Image-Based Tools. But really, there are just 3 that are all listed in this post.
Anyway, remove.bg has saved me so much time and pain.
I wish it existed when I started my business.
The task of using an online eraser tool to go around the product, scrubbing out the background and shadow was not an enjoyable one.
I usually ended up either missing a bit in a tight area or taking too much off and leaving a chunk cut out of the product.
Remove.bg does all of that for you automatically and to perfection. Oh, and it’s free!
You upload your file. It removes your background. You can choose no background or select a white background. Which gives you a clear, crisp product image.
Now it’s time to download your files, ready for our next useful tool.
Create Product Photos with Canva
Canva is a photo editing tool used by online businesses and content creators.
Think of it like Photoshop but in the cloud (and free).
I’ve created every one of my product photos and website graphics using Canva and it’s never let me down.
Here’s my simple process:
Create a new blank canvas using Shopify’s recommended product image dimensions of 2048 x 2048 pixels. These are Shopify’s official guidelines, so it’s common sense to stick to them unless it’s really necessary to do otherwise.
Set the background colour to white or the colour code #FFFFFF as it’s known.
Upload the files that you downloaded from remove.bg. They should appear in your uploads section on the left-hand side.
One-by-one, drag each image onto the canvas.
Centre it using the lines provided and leave some whitespace around the outside (remember what I said earlier about Amazon and Google Shopping guidelines).
File Names for Product Images
Okay, now you’re ready to give your files a name.
File names can have a small impact on your SEO (if you want to know how I make a big impact with SEO, try my internal linking strategy post).
Plus it’s free and easy to do, so you might as well do it right.
I suggest using a keyword that best describes your item, followed by some important attributes like colour or size.
The way I like to do it is to use a keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to find a keyword that accurately describes my product and hopefully has some people searching for it (search volume).
For example, nike-mens-short-sleeve-tshirt-white-medium.
Make sure you format the file name using dashes to make it readable.
See how hard it is to read nikemensshortsleevetshirtwhitemedium?
Okay, go ahead and download your image as a JPEG file so you’re ready for the next step.
Compress Product Photos for Better Site Speed
Large image files can slow down your website’s loading speed.
E-commerce sites tend to have a lot of photos (vs a written blog, for example), so it’s something worth checking.
Shopify’s dashboard has a built-in score for site speed, which you can find by going to Online store > Themes.
But it’s also worth getting a second opinion from Google’s page speed tool https://pagespeed.web.dev/.
Now, I’m pretty sure Shopify does some image optimization for you anyway.
But it won’t hurt to compress them first by using another great free tool.
TingPNG is a drag-and-drop tool for JPEG compression for faster websites.
All you have to do is upload your files, click compress, then download them again. It’s so simple.
So upload the files you just created in Canva.
Compress.
Download.
And you’re done!
There’s only one thing you might want to clean up.
If you’ve correctly named your image in Canva, like nike-mens-short-sleeve-tshirt-white-medium, the compressed image will download as nike-mens-short-sleeve-tshirt-white-medium-1 because you already had 1 version saved in your files.
So what you can do is go into your file folder and delete the original Canva image (or change the file name), then edit the name of the compressed file by removing the -1.
If you’re an OCD type of person, this does look cleaner.
Personally, I don’t bother. But I should because it only takes a few seconds.
Upload Product Photos to Shopify
Here we go. We’re on the home straight now.
It’s time to upload your new product images to your product pages.
Here’s what I do:
Go to the product page.
Click Add Files.
Upload.
Easy!
But here’s the important part that some people miss:
Adding alt tags.
Alt tags are pieces of text that you add to describe what’s in an image.
It helps Google’s crawlers understand what the photo is.
If you get this right, there’s a good chance your products rank in Google image search results, exposing your products to more potential buyers.
Again, I would use a similar technique for naming the image as we did in Canva.
But here, you can use spaces between words instead of dashes, so it reads like a real sentence.
Using the previous example, this would be Nike Men’s Short Sleeve Tshirt White Medium.
So go through each image in your Shopify and click Change Alt Tags.
Submit Sitemap to Google
If you haven’t already, set up a Google account and go to Google Search Console.
Link your website to your Google account following the instructions provided.
Go to the Sitemaps section of Google Search Console.
Find out the sitemap address of your store.
Paste it into the empty field.
Press submit.
Google should now crawl your site for the changes you’ve made.