Every e-commerce company relies on top-notch product photography to generate sales. Because of this, professional product retouching in Photoshop has emerged as a crucial element in producing high-quality product images.
For startup businesses, it isn’t cost-effective to hire photographers and editors in the early stages of operation. Fortunately, there are tools available to help startups produce sale-boosting product photos at considerably lower costs. Product photography editing in tools like Adobe Photoshop significantly impacts how to deliver outstanding product images to customers.
If you’re concerned about lacking the skills to use photo editing software, don’t worry. Our experts at Stellar Studios will guide you through achieving professional-looking product photos in the comfort of your home. Here are surefire ways to boost your sales by editing product photos in Photoshop.
What is product photography?
Before we get into editing tips, taking a quick course on product photography is essential.
In an industry where the product photo is the primary selling point, having high-quality product photography is essential for converting clicks to sales. That’s where product photography comes in. Professional product photography means taking pictures of a business’s product to be used on websites and social media pages to drive profit.
In addition to increasing sales, product images are crucial to advancing the buyer’s journey. By looking at the pictures, customers can visualize how the product might fit into their lives. Product pictures can also help improve branding since they visually communicate who you are and what you’re about.
Due to the rise of e-commerce, consumers now have access to a plethora of product and brand options. With that, it’s time for you to be one of those brands people are looking for. Visit our article on different types of product photography if you need more time to comprehend this context. In the meantime, let’s discuss Photoshop product editing in more detail.
How to Achieve Flawless Product Photo Editing in Photoshop
Retouching the product photos is the next step after you’ve brought your product shoot ideas to life. Using Adobe Photoshop, follow these ways to edit product photos in a professional-looking manner.
Clean the Product Image
The first thing you need to do before thoroughly refining your product photos is to clean up the raw image. Making a background layer for the image before editing it is one of the best ways to guarantee that it retains the integrity of the original. After that, you can remove the background and the existing blemishes to fine-tune the image.
Remove background
Removing the background of a product photo reduces distractions and increases focus on your product. Follow these steps to get rid of the background successfully.
- From the tools panel, select the eraser tool to drag down the eraser option. There, you’ll see three options: eraser, background eraser, and magic eraser.
- Select the background eraser tool; your cursor will become a brush with a circle and a small crosshair in the middle.
- Place the brush in the targeted area. The crosshair will take a sample color of what you want to erase. The larger circle around the crosshair shows the background-removal area. Any pixels in the ring that matches the pixel color under the crosshair will be removed.
- Right-click to remove the background image. Hold the right mouse button to drag the background eraser to more areas. Do not place the crosshair where you don’t want pixels erased. If you accidentally did this, undo the action by pressing CTRL + Z.
Another Photoshop editing option you can use is the magic eraser tool. The magic eraser instantly removes the background image, leaving your non-targeted areas untouched. If the magic eraser doesn’t remove all areas, use the background eraser to smoothen the edges. Once you remove the background, the image will become transparent, allowing you to add light-colored backgrounds to your product images and make them more dynamic.
Clear blemishes
When you take pictures of a product, it’s important to eliminate scratches, dust, fingerprints, and other blemishes. Use Photoshop to edit imperfections in your product photos with the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools.
For fixing multiple areas of a photo, the best Photoshop tool to use is the healing brush, thanks to its ability to cover minute imperfections by patching and blending them up with a pre-determined image section. On the other hand, the clone stamp tool gives you greater creative freedom by manually selecting pixels to copy and paste them into another area. To achieve a more natural look with the colors, choose a lower hardness setting when working with this tool.
Retouch the Product Photo
Once you’re done cleaning the product photo, you can proceed to further image refinement. You can use Adobe Photoshop to edit the photo’s color, improve lighting, and add more texture. See what you can do better by doing the following:
Adjust color tones
Adjusting tones or color correction is an integral part of product photo retouching. When doing this, keep in mind that a product’s image should accurately reflect the color of the actual product. You don’t want to disappoint customers by selling them something that doesn’t resemble the picture on your website. Correcting the color tones in your product photo can be done by adjusting the white balance, brightness, contrast, exposure, and saturation.
- White Balance
White balance makes a photo’s colors look more realistic. This can be adjusted in-camera or with Photoshop. The best way to correct white balance in Photoshop is by using the curves tool. You can do this by clicking the following in the menu bar: image>adjustments>curves.
- Brightness and Contrast
Brightness and contrast are other aspects to improve in Photoshop when editing product photos. In the menu bar, do this by clicking on the following: image > adjustments > brightness/contrast. Change the image’s overall brightness by dragging the brightness slider and change the image’s contrast by moving the contrast slider.
- Exposure
The brightness or darkness of an image is determined by its exposure. Any photograph that is too dark is underexposed. It’s overexposed if it’s too light. The easiest way to edit your product photo’s exposure in Photoshop is to create an adjustment layer through the following: layer > new adjustment layer > exposure. You can adjust the exposure layer by moving the slider.
- Saturation
Saturation increases or decreases the vibrance of your product photo. Adjusting the saturation will do the trick if you want your product photos to have more punch. You can change the saturation by doing the following: image > adjustments > hue/saturation. When the saturation bar appears, adjust the slider to the left or right until you are happy with the vibrancy of the image.
Add shadows
Including shadows in your photographs can make the products stand out more from the background. If you want to add shadows to your product images, do so in a way that appears natural. Here’s how you can edit natural-looking shadows in your product photos using Photoshop.
Drop Shadow
Drop shadows create the illusion that sunlight is shining directly on your product. It gives your product photos more depth and texture, increasing consumer appeal. Here’s how you can add drop shadows to your image in Photoshop.
- Choose the layer to which you want to add a drop shadow.
- Select Drop Shadow from the FX menu at the bottom of the Layers panel.
- Select the type of effect you want for your shadow in the Drop Shadow Layer Style dialog box that appears.
- To apply your changes, click OK.
Reflection Shadow
Reflection shadows give the appearance that you took the product photos on a reflective surface. It provides the product with a luxurious and elegant look. To achieve this effect on the picture you’re editing in Photoshop, watch this 1-minute tutorial or apply the following steps:
- Copy a section of the image.
- Paste it as a new layer.
- Flip and place it under the original photo.
- Change the layer blend mode to mask the reflection layer.
Improve sharpness
When you edit the sharpness of a product photo in Photoshop, it emphasizes the edges of the picture to make the shot look sharper to the customer. You can improve sharpness by using the unsharp mask filter. Navigate the filter by doing the following: filter > sharpen > unsharp mask. After that, the unsharp mask dialog box appears, and you can change the sharpness by dragging the threshold, amount, and radius sliders.
Apply the Ghost Mannequin effect
If you’re an online clothing store, you need to give customers a way to visualize how the clothes will look and feel on them. Models wearing your clothing may help draw attention to your brand, but they may also distract customers from your actual product. Fortunately, product photography editing in Photoshop makes it possible to view an item from every side using the ghost mannequin effect. With this method, you can show off parts of your product that are usually hidden when worn by a model. Doing this will give you a great image of your product, amplifying its best qualities and increasing sales. Watch this easy ghost mannequin tutorial to achieve this effect.
Get Professional Product Photography Editing from Stellar Studios
Product photography editing in Photoshop can be quite the work, but the results are fulfilling. The hardest part about refining your photos is getting an accurate portrayal of your products without confusing your shoppers. Nevertheless, knowing how to improve your product photos in Photoshop is essential for a business owner, since it can not only help you increase sales but also develop more successful content marketing strategies.
Don’t have the time to do all this? Stellar Studios can help you create cutting-edge product photos, from conception to post-editing. Contact us today to bring your ideas to life!