How to take photos for e-commerce and catalogs

Taking photos of a product for advertising purposes, for an e-commerce or a catalog, is never easy. Photography has to enhance its details, showing all the beauty of the photographic subject, without shadows, reflections or other elements that can distract attention.

To create still life photos there are several Lightboxes on the market, from the cheapest ones to the most professional ones, and the most common mistake is to think that they are all the same.

Most cheap or hand-made lightboxes do not lighten the workload because to obtain a homogeneous white background without shadows, unwanted reflections and a perfect color rendering, it is necessary to modify the photo through a long photo editing session that requires specific knowledge and a lot of time (from 30 minutes to 2 hours).

A professional Lightbox allows anyone, even those who have no knowledge in the photographic field, to obtain perfect photos in a few seconds and it considerably reduce the time required to create a photograph. This decrease in time can be translated into an economic saving in labor costs, which far exceeds the initial investment in the purchase of the Lightbox.

The photographic process may be different based on the Lightbox, but normally requires these steps:

1. create the Lightbox, if it is a system composed of spotlights and backgrounds (this step is not present if the Lightbox is already mounted)
2. place the subject in the center of the Lightbox and, if the subject has to assume a particular position, use the glue or a support (e.g. for jewelry)
3. choose the position of the camera, which is usually used via a tripod, which makes camera movements difficult around a small subject
4. take the picture with the camera
5. transfer photos from camera to computer via USB cable or SD card
6. open a photo editor to edit the photo
7. import the photo to edit it one by one
8. edit manually the photo to turn the background into white and remove unwanted shadows and reflections (this phase can last even more than an hour)

The photographic process with FourPro technology is very simple:

1. turn on the Lightbox choosing the source and color of the light according to the product
2. place the subject in the center of the Lightbox
3. rotate the camera around the subject to find the best angle and position of the subject
4. take the photo via camera or software

The photo will appear on the computer already with a white background, without shadows and reflections and will therefore be ready to be published on your website or e-commerce or to be used to create your own catalog.