In the last few years, there has been an abundance of new product photography apps, photography software, and website resources to help you at every stage of your eCommerce business.
It’s hard to keep track of both what’s available to you and what each resource does.
We have created a list of resources that can help you create better product photography. We have also organized all the product photography apps based on how they can help you.
From collecting stock images to finding apps to help you take better photos and editing software for post-production. There is something here to help everyone improve their product photography on their ecommerce store.
Free stock photography websites
Sometimes you need a good-quality stock image as the base for a product photography or banner image. These websites feature some of the best stock photography for eCommerce entrepreneurs.
Burst is a photography website powered by Shopify themselves. The idea behind Burst is to provide copyright-free images that are particularly relevant to eCommerce entrepreneurs.
This means they feature photos involving some of the most popular and trending product categories such as coffee and iPhone accessories.
But they also have more general collections that will be useful for your social media marketing or to just fill out your site while you’re getting started.
Unsplash is a fantastic resource of free, high-resolution photos with more than 10 billion photos viewed on the site every month.
The website is super easy to navigate and is broken down into easy-to-navigate collections.
Their collections make it super easy to find photos relevant to what you want.
The website is frequently updated, which means they tend to not be as overused and generic as other stock images.
Unsplash has a great range of photos that will suit people from many different fields. But their catalog does cater somewhat to digital marketing, creatives and people within tech. Of their audience:
- 20% have a postgraduate degree
- 31% are in management
- 75% are aged 18 – 34
- 24% are in creative
- 28% are in tech
If you fit into any of these demographics, there’s a good chance Unsplash will have photos you’re looking for.
Another great resource for stock product photos, Pexels has thousands of photos that you can use for personal or commercial use.
If you want to add some life to your website, they also have copyright-free videos available for use.
Still can’t find the right photo? Stock Up indexes stock photography from 31 different websites and provides them all under one website.
When you search for a particular collection or topic on Stock Up, you’ll be led to the original website where you can do a deeper search. For a more comprehensive list of great stock photography resources, check out our list of 40 sites with awesome stock images.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a run-of-the-mill photo in this site’s massive photo collection.
Founded and created by artist Ryan McGuire, Gratisography offers a variety of quirky, high-resolution stock images that will make your site stand out.
Every photo is free for commercial use, and you can expect brand new additions every week.
Unlike most stock photography sites that feature cheesy images of models smiling at each other, Picography boasts a jam-packed selection of lifestyle photos that range from beautiful scenery to intricate tech photography.
All photos come with a Creative Commons CC0 license, meaning you can edit and use them for personal and commercial purposes.
Perfect for startups, bloggers, and designers, Startup Stock delivers a collection of tech-centric imagery. Most of the photos are of people working on their laptops, conducting meetings, writing, or coding. While the site doesn’t contain as many photos compared to others, it’s one of the only few platforms that offer images centered on the startup scene.
As you can probably already tell by the name, FoodiesFeed is an excellent resource for photos that are related to food.
Curated by talented food photographers from all around the world, its library of images only feature vibrant, mouthwatering, and world-class food images.
Whatever type of ecommerce site you may have, you’ll find the photos on StokPic.
On top of the images readily available on the site, it has a subscription model that gives you ten new photos every week.
With more than a million free photos available, Pixabay is one of the largest (if not the largest) stock image provider out there.
Not only does it offer high-quality and royalty-free images, but it also features illustrations, vectors, and videos you can use for a variety of projects.
Product photography apps
Taking photos with your smartphone might not lead to a career as a professional photographer, but for product photos, modern iPhones and Android cameras are more than capable of taking high-quality images suitable for eCommerce.
Pairing your camera with the right app can take your photography to the next level.
While these apps can help, remember to go easy on the filters and editing.
After all, customers want to see what the product will look like when they buy it, not what it will look like on Instagram.
Using this all-in-one app from Adobe, you can snap the perfect photo, crop it down and make basic edits to get the colors to look just right.
The app supports a wide range of image formats and lets you make all the essential edits you need to take a basic product photo.
You can also share the images with your audience straight from the app to help build awareness of your product before launching it.
Download it here: iOS, Android, Windows Store
TouchRetouch is an impressive app that lets you remove lines and small images from your photos completely!
The app is very intuitive and the results speak for themselves. For those times when you need to clone or remove items from your photos, TouchRetouch is a fantastic tool to have installed on your phone.
Download it here: iOS, Android
Sometimes, you just need a little bit of extra control over your iPhone’s settings to get the photo just right.
Camera+2 provides access to focus and exposure settings, as well as a ton of presets, to make shooting high-quality photos quick and easy.
Download it here: iOS
For certain products, people want to see what the product looks like on an actual person.
But photographing products with people presents its own challenges.
Facetune lets you take professional-looking photos of people modeling your products without any expensive equipment or software.
Like filters, you don’t want to go overboard, but it can give your product photos a more professional edge where appropriate.
These apps will help you put the final touches on your product photos, but they can’t compensate for poorly-taken photos. You need to know how to take photos with your smartphone first.
Download it here: iOS, Android
Foodie is perfect for companies who prioritize food and lifestyle images.
And despite what the name of the app implies, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can only be used for food photography.
The app includes a variety of vibrant filters that can accentuate the colors of a product, along with nifty features that help you capture striking images.
The list includes Top View, which aids in taking the perfect bird’s eye view shot, Blur, which helps in keeping a product in focus, and Flash, which could help in low-light situations.
Download it here: iOS, Android
Specially developed to cater to ecommerce businesses, Product Camera helps you take pictures that sell.
When you take a photo of a particular product, the background is automatically taken out to save you time from editing your images one by one.
It also instantly adds soft shadow, improves lighting, and optimizes the focus on the product so the images would be ready for posting once exported.
Download it here: Android
Photo editing apps
So you have your product photos taken, but they aren’t quite ready to go live on your website yet.
Maybe they aren’t the right size or need some adjustments to bring them up to a professional level.
Having inconsistent or poorly-optimized images can make browsing your website a painful experience.
This list of photo editing software goes beyond Photoshop to cover a range of free and paid tools that will help you edit your product photography and get it retail-ready.
Pixc has helped thousands of stores with their photo-editing needs.
Pixc automates the tedious photo-editing process for you.
We get your product photos retail-ready by removing the background from images and optimizing them for your eCommerce store. Your images are edited and returned all within 24 hours!
Try it for free here.
Lightroom allows you to take high-quality photos and edit them anywhere using your desktop or mobile device.
Their seamless syncing between devices means you can take photos using a DSLR or smartphone, upload them, and have them ready to organize and edit anywhere.
Use your tablet to apply powerful filter presets or make custom edits to your photos on the go.
For photos involving models, Portrait Professional can help you airbrush and retouch your photos in minutes.
The software can help you achieve certain stylistic looks, such as glamor shots, or address specific problems in your photos, such as lighting or color correction.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is an open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop for Mac, Windows, and Linux users.
Being open source means it is completely free for you to download and use.
The UI might not always be as slick as Photoshop, but if you need a more advanced photo-editor without the Adobe price tag, or just want to try out photo editing, GIMP is a fantastic resource.
Check out their tutorials section to see ways you can use GIMP for your product photo editing.
Even though I have Photoshop, Sketch, and numerous other image editing apps installed, I find myself using the Pixlr online photo editor on a regular basis.
Pixlr isn’t as feature rich or intuitive as native applications like Photoshop, but there is a lot to be said for having a powerful photo-editor readily available anywhere you have an internet browser.
For simple edits like resizing and cropping, Pixlr is a great tool to have up your sleeve.
Canva is a surprisingly slick image editor that is focused more on creating promotional images like banners and flyers.
But it’s features are still great for combining photos and putting together images on the fly.
Canva has a range of great features available for free that let you create professional images for your eCommerce store and share your images among your team for later use.
If all you need to do is some light editing and retouching, Adobe Photoshop Fix is your best bet.
With useful features like liquify, heal, lighten, and color adjustment, you can take your product photos from drab to beautiful in just a few clicks.
And if you happen to own a Creative Cloud subscription, you can migrate the photos from Fix to actual Photoshop, allowing you to edit the images further on the more feature-rich app.
Download it here: iOS, Android
Originally an app for collage making, BeFunky is now a popular all-in-one browser-based creative platform that allows for hassle-free photo editing and graphic design.
You can use it to batch edit a large collection of photos in one go using features like the Cutout tool (for removing backgrounds), TouchUp (for quick retouches), and Resize (to achieve pixel-perfect accuracy).
BeFunky also has a built-in graphic design editor for putting together marketing materials like flyers, banners, posters, infographics, and more.
All you have to do is take your pick from the templates readily available and edit to your heart’s content.
A free photo editing software you can download on your computer, PhotoScape has no shortage of handy tools you can use to improve your photos.
It comes equipped with features like Filters for quick image enhancement, Light Leaks for turning photos into vintage-looking imagery, Cut Out for background removal, and GIF Creator for making moving GIFs.
Download it here: Mac, Windows
Seashore is a free image editor that provides basic image editing tools for quick and easy image manipulation.
If you’re intimidated by feature-rich apps like Photoshop, you’ll find Seashore incredibly easy to navigate as it has a user-friendly interface designed for beginners.
Download it here: Mac
Photography and photo editing tutorials
If you’re keen on doing everything yourself, there’s a wealth of resources out there that will give you all the knowledge and skills to conduct your own shoot and edit your own photos.
Below you’ll find a list of sites and guides that you can use to learn different production techniques.
Anyone who has tried working a camera knows that good lighting is the key to a great photo.
In this photography blog, you’ll learn everything that is needed about setting up the perfect lighting — may it be natural or artificial light. You’ll discover the best gear to use, techniques on how to control the quality of light, and lots more.
We partnered with Shopify to bring you this comprehensive guide on DIY product photography for eCommerce entrepreneurs.
In this free ebook, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of product photography.
You’ll know why it’s important, the different tools you need to set up your own shoot, the types of photos to take, and how to optimize images for SEO and conversion.
This site is not called Popular Photography for no reason.
Arguably it is one of the most recognized photography resources.
It offers a wealth of photography-related information that covers everything from shooting tips and tricks to photography gear to the latest news in the field.
Tuts+ provides free tutorials, learning guides, and online courses all geared towards helping you improve your photography, videography, and editing skills.
All resources available on the site are updated regularly so you can gain a solid understanding of current practices and emerging techniques.
Not to toot our own horn here, but our blog is a great resource not just for ecommerce-related content, but also for photography tips and tricks.
The Pixc blog has a dedicated section for all things product photography, where you will find photography tutorials, step-by-step editing, guides, and a whole lot more about scaling your product photography needs.
In addition to our blog, we have also put together three free mini ebooks to help you build a better eCommerce business.
For starters, we have the Product Photography Basics, where you can learn things such as setting up a camera and basic post-editing.
We also have the How to Photograph Clothing for Your Shopify Store guide, where you can explore how to increase sales with good images on Shopify.
Lastly, we have the How to Photograph Jewelry which is pretty self-explanatory.
You can download the guides here.
Ecommerce platform photo apps
You may not be aware of it, but the platform in which you’re hosting your eCommerce site most likely has a ton of photography plug-ins that can help enhance your business and drive sales.
Here is a quick rundown of some of the best plug-ins available, along with their specific purpose.
- Loox (Shopify): Collect photo reviews from your happy customers and embed them in your site to boost sales.
- Lookbook (Shopify): Create a gallery of products with shoppable tags.
- Confident Customer Video and Photo Reviews (Shopify): Collect and display photo and video reviews from customers to improve your store’s credibility.
- Photolock (Shopify): Prevent site visitors from saving your store’s images.
- Pixc: Image Editing (Shopify): Have your photos edited and optimized in 24 hours.
- Pixc: Photo Resize (Shopify): Make your site look more professional by resizing and replacing all your product photos in just a few clicks. Your first 150 photo resizes are free!
- Gallery by POWr (BigCommerce): A fuss-free way to build photo grids, user testimonial pages, and press galleries.
- Magic Zoom Plus (BigCommerce): Add zoom functionality to your product photos.
- Product Video Thumbnails (BigCommerce): Easily add product videos to the thumbnails of your product page.
- 360 Degree Product Images (BigCommerce): Create product pages with rotating, 360-degree images.
- Image Slider (Magento): Incorporate an image and video rotation system within your store.
- Lazy Load Products & Images (Magento): Delay loading product images to allow for better loading speed as customers scroll through your site.
- Color Swatches Pro (Magento): Replace plain product descriptions with color swatches
Final Thoughts…
As more and more ecommerce stores open, the need for quick, easy to use photo editing tools and breathtaking stock photographs.
At the same time, product photography apps and solid photo editing skills are becoming essential as the quality of social media and web images escalates.
And it will continue to escalate because, let’s face it, we’re not in 1999 anymore.
Ensure your customers notice and admire your products by experimenting with the tools above and tell us how it goes!
Share on social:
