How Ecommerce Photo Retouching Helps Save Your Business Money

Shooting all of your products for your eCommerce website not only takes a long time but also costs a lot of money. You’ll need professional cameras, lighting, lenses, a studio, a crew, and at least one full day to shoot everything. Many people believe that because of the costs associated with product photography, they can save money by eliminating photo retouching and ecommerce photo editing. In this blog, our aim is to bust that myth by demonstrating how photo retouching can actually save you money in the long run. Instead of increasing your costs, it reduces them while increasing the quality and productivity of your product photo shoot.

1. Lowers return rates

Unlike a physical store where customers can hold, touch, and even try on your products, eCommerce sites rely solely on product photos, making it critical that product photos appear as true to life as possible. According to estimates, nearly 15-30% of online purchases are returned, compared to only 8-10% of traditional retail purchases. This disparity in return rates is detrimental to retailers because it reduces profit margins and raises overall costs (i.e. shipping costs, restocking, etc.). Professional photo retouching reduces returns by ensuring your product is accurately represented. Color matching ensures that lighting, camera settings, and other factors do not alter the color of your product photos.

By editing the color of a product instead of shooting it multiple times to show its different colors, photo retouching can save you time (and extra studio rental hours). This also ensures that your photos are consistent throughout. Photo retouching can also help your customers get a better idea of how your products will look when worn without having to hire a model or having model draw attention away from your products. This is accomplished through the use of a technique known as the ghost mannequin effect. You will display your products on your mannequin during the shoot so that it will fall more naturally and show its true shape when worn, and photo retouches can have the mannequin edited out in post-production.

Essentially, the more accurate your product photos are, the less likely they are to return it, leaving you with more satisfied customers who will no doubt become your loyal client.

2. Saves you time during the shoot

As previously stated, shooting products takes a significant amount of time. It takes time and effort to get your products to look perfect in every shot, whether you’re cataloguing all of your products for your eCommerce website or doing a more editorial-style photo shoot. If you choose to shoot your products flat, for example, photographers will typically pin them to a foam board to minimize shadows while creating more natural shapes. The problem is that if you’re not careful, this can result in visible pins. The pins can be easily removed in post-production, that is with a product photo editing service saving you (and the stylist who is fixing the clothes) time during the shoot. You can shoot more layouts and products in less time this way.

3. Optimizes images

This is an advantage of photo retouching that many people overlook. Background removal, cropping, margins, alignment, and even image compression all contribute to making your images look more consistent, professional, and usable for your website. Many online selling platforms, such as Amazon, eBay, and Rakuten, require background removal as well. It reduces the file size of an image, allowing the page to load faster. Compressing images will improve the loading speed of your site, and faster load speeds have been shown to lead to more conversions and satisfied customers.

Not every business can afford to hire a team of professional in-house photo retouches. Retouching Visuals provides high-end eCommerce photo editing services to elevate your images. We’ve built a solid portfolio with clients that include several popular eCommerce brands like sportswear, jewelry, apparel, and more. Each image is carefully crafted and tailored, and we guarantee that none of our work is one-size-fits-all.