Online marketing has been growing rapidly in this day and age. You can foresee that new digital technologies are transforming and ready to boost potential for innovation in e-commerce. Online shopping behavior has become the new ‘normal’, meanwhile the traditional method of visiting stores is gradually on the decline. In the online market, mostly your customer will rely heavily on your products’ visual presentations before reading the descriptions and proceed to the next step. Imagine, if a website you’re looking at only has a written description of certain products but no actual photos, would you buy them anyway?
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Product photography in e-commerce business is essential, but post-processing work becomes one of the most important tasks to perfect your product images afterward. In short, product photo editing is inevitably needed. You might have prepared the proper tools for your photography studio, but even though your product shots turn out exactly how you wanted —or nearly perfect— you should still want to edit your photos. Photo editing won’t turn bad product photographs into great marketing materials, but it will turn good results into remarkable ones. It’s not like you’re going to make your products different from what it’s actually look like. Instead, better to think of it as retouching or polishing to improve the value of your products.
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According to ShipStation regarding product photography, it’s important to figure out how you want the final product to look before moving onto photo editing. You aim for consistency in imagery while trying to make them align with many aspects. For example, the format and size of your product photos needs to be customized according to the marketing platform you’re using. You also have to know your customer’s preference on the way you show off your products. Shoppers will remember a particular style if your product photos can create impact in their minds.
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Research from Salsify stated that
Around 38% of shoppers are most likely to buy a product if the images only include the item against a plain background.
Meanwhile, 37 percent want to see photos of products while in use contextually, and 25 percent want user-generated images from people who've purchased the product in the past. Keeping those facts in mind, we can narrow down the types of photo editing that are suitable for e-commerce business, such as background removal, background replacements, product in lifestyle images, and user generated contents.

Amazon product photography requirements.
For the consistency around the website, Amazon does require all product photos to be clean-cut images that appear on white background. Removing the background images will enhance the main feature of the products so the shoppers have no choice but to focus on the product alone. Even it's usually a good idea to show off products from different angles. For further proof, about a quarter of shoppers preferred to see minimum 6 photos (front, back, side, 360, close-up, etc) before they considered making a purchase.  Look at product images shown in Fjallraven - Kanken page on Amazon as an example Credit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019FNX4WI There’s also a survey findings showing that brands should not rely only on still life images. Lifestyle images or on-model photography is more likely to increase shoppers likelihood to purchase.
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This type of photo shows the product more in context, placing it in a setting where it would most likely be used. Most common photo editing type used is background replacement. Take a look at the example below, Camelbak took an approach to make the product seem to be in a specific environment and in this case, the outdoors. This kind of lifestyle image will help shoppers to visualize the product in their own lives.
​ Credit: https://international.camelbak.com/ In conclucion, product editing is essential to e-commerce business,

and the type of editing may vary depending on how the products want to be used. It can be simple retouching, background removal on a large scale, background replacement, or on-model lifestyle edit. The most important is choosing the right strategy. Every product requires an approach that best showcases those products’ strengths. Furthermore, the size and format should be compatible with many online marketing platforms.
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You already know that some businesses do outsourcing photo editing service to have more time focusing on growing the brand, to help while meeting deadlines, and even to save more cost. Darshana Design Studio (in collaboration with SelfMade) provides service to create branded visual contents needed by e-commerce in achieving such purpose. One of the services we give being: professional photo retouching, background removal, background replacement service, and many more. With quick turn-around time, meticulous quality checking, and mass production service, we are ready to provide you the content you need to grow your business.