Digital image retouching or photo editing, is an umbrella term used to refer to a wide variety of methods and processes that can be applied to an image in order to visually enhance it in one way or the other. Image retouching is usually made necessary because of certain unpleasant issues concerning an image that may tend to distort the viewer’s attention, or cause a less than ideal viewing pleasure. Such issues include image noise, blown highlights, unfocused images and blemishes on the face or skin of a model.
The Benefits of High-Quality Product Images
In the case of an e-commerce portal, photos are of vital importance because they are what a customer will see first. The saying goes that a picture speaks a thousand words, and since your customer is not physically there to hold and inspect the product, you need to offer an image of what you are selling, and it needs to be of a high quality. Quality images, plus quality sales copy has been proven to increase sales. This happens because good images will help your potential customer to better understand what you are selling, especially when taken from different angles of the product.
High quality images will let the potential customer see details that are of vital importance, like the leather finish, actual color or the detailed craftsmanship of a unique item. Without high quality images, none, or few of these vital qualities of a product image would be visible, and sales would suffer. Good images also make your business stand out from competitors and encourage social media sharing, which in turn helps to boost your brand.
The Individual Techniques & Their Benefits
If your product pictures were not taken by a professional using a properly setup studio, then it will require much more product retouching work, or in case you work with a model, more fashion retouching work. There are many photo editing techniques that can be applied to your product’s image retouching, the major ones are:
– Color Correction
Some pictures can simply appear tasteless. They lack a certain vibrancy or they have too much of a certain color. This problem is not only typical of photos taken by amateurs, it affects professionals as well. A product photo with such issues will normally be less appealing to potential customers, but when color correction has been performed on it, it will reflect more life and beauty, which draws in a potential customer and thus helps to increase sales.
– Cropping
A product-image might contain very detailed work that cannot be seen easily. Sometimes, it is this level of detail that increases the value of the product. This is especially true for jewelry, lingerie and fine leather goods. By cropping the image, you sort of zoom into it, and intentionally expose your product’s best qualities to a potential customer. This technique has also been proven to increase sales, and many businesses now incorporate zoom functions on their product-images, for the very same reason.
– Clipping / Background Removal
The background of an image can sometimes create unwanted distractions that remove a potential customer’s focus from the product-image. By clipping and removing the background of an image, the total focus will now fall on the product.
– Fashion Retouching
Fashion retouching is used to make a photo model appear more appealing to potential customers. There are many processes that can be carried out, including removal of skin blemishes, eye color change, making a face thinner and wrinkle reduction. The psychological reason behind fashion retouching is that human beings tend to associate or transact more with people that they consider attractive.
– Product Retouching
Product retouching aims to make your product more visually appealing, or dynamic, by focusing on or highlighting the important aspects of it. This may require the use of lights and shades, background effects and color enhancements.
Conclusion
we all know the importance of product images for an e-commerce portal. Whether you take the product-photos at home, in the office or in a studio, one thing remains clear:
You need some image retouching jobs done on them in order to maximize your Return on Investment. It’s as simple as that.