Product Photography Retouching: What Happens After the Shoot (And Why It Matters)

# Product Photography Retouching: What Happens After the Shoot (And Why It Matters)

Quick Answer: Professional product photo retouching typically includes color correction, background cleanup, dust and blemish removal, exposure balancing, and file output optimization. Basic retouching adds 20-40% to a shoot's total cost; advanced compositing or heavy retouching can double it. Images with professional post-production have been shown to increase e-commerce conversion rates by 30% compared to unretouched product shots (BigCommerce, 2024). The shoot is the raw material. The retouch is the finished product.

There's a persistent myth in product photography that a good photographer just gets the shot in camera and hands it over. Occasionally that's true -- a perfectly lit, perfectly composed shot of a matte-surface product on a clean background, shot tethered, can come out of the camera nearly finished. Maybe 15 minutes of post-production.

Then there's the other 90% of commercial product work.

The ring with a fingerprint that materialized between cleaning it and shooting it. The white background that read as slightly cream on the studio monitor but is clearly off-white against the brand's actual white in the export. The glass bottle with a distracting reflection from the studio ceiling that couldn't be eliminated without killing the product's shape entirely. The supplement package where the foil caught a hot spot that the client's marketing director is going to notice immediately.

All of that gets fixed in post. Or it doesn't, and the image is unusable.

Understanding what professional product photo retouching actually involves -- and what you should be paying for and expecting -- makes you a better client, gives you more leverage in briefing, and helps you understand why some images cost significantly more than others.

The Difference Between Basic Editing and Professional Retouching

Basic Editing (Included in Almost Every Shoot)

Basic editing is the minimum expected output from any professional product photographer:

• Color correction and white balance: Adjusting the file so colors accurately match the physical product and render correctly across different screens. This includes calibrating against color reference cards shot during the session.
• Exposure balancing: Bringing highlights, shadows, and midtones to a consistent, correct level. Basic tone curve work.
• Cropping and straightening: Making sure products are properly centered, horizons are level, and framing is consistent across a set.
• Batch consistency: Ensuring a set of 10 product images all have the same treatment -- same white balance, same relative exposure, same crop relationship.

For most brand shoots, basic editing adds 10-20 minutes per final image to the workflow. A batch of 20 product images might require 4-6 hours of editing time to reach consistent, clean output.

Professional Retouching (Quoted Separately)

Beyond basic editing, professional retouching addresses specific problems that the camera captures but the human eye filters:

Dust and particle removal: At macro or close-up distances, every particle of dust on a product or surface is visible and distracting. Retouching removes these particles individually in post-production -- sometimes dozens per frame.

Background perfection: A "white" background in a photograph is usually not a single value of white. There are gradients from lighting falloff, shadows from the product, slight color casts from reflected light. Retouching makes backgrounds genuinely clean and consistent, which matters especially when product images will be composited onto website backgrounds or layered with graphic elements.

Surface defect removal: Fingerprints that appeared after cleaning, minor surface scratches, packaging imperfections (dents, creases, scuffs from shipping or handling), printing inconsistencies. The camera records everything.

Reflection management: Glass and reflective packaging inevitably carry reflections of the studio, lights, or camera. Retouching removes distracting reflections while preserving the specular highlights that communicate the material's quality and form.

Product liquids and transparency: Serums, oils, beverages, and any product with visible liquid require specific attention. Liquids can render muddy, overly saturated, or with unwanted color casts. Retouching corrects the liquid while preserving its translucency and depth.

Compositing and background replacement: Replacing studio backgrounds with rendered environments, lifestyle contexts, or gradients. This is a separate skill from retouching and typically priced as a distinct service.

Common Retouching Services and What They Cost

Dust and Basic Cleanup Standard for most professional shoots. Usually included in the base rate for photographers who deliver finished files. Time: 15-30 minutes per image.

Background Cleanup / Pure White Making backgrounds genuinely pure white (255, 255, 255) for Amazon compliance or consistent web display. Time: 20-45 minutes per image. Usually $20-$50 per image when quoted separately.

Heavy Surface Retouching Jewelry, polished metals, skincare products, anything with reflective or complex surfaces. Removing reflections, correcting specular highlights, managing transparency. Time: 45-90 minutes per image. Usually $50-$150 per image.

Compositing (Background Replacement) Placing a product shot on a new background -- a lifestyle environment, a gradient, a texture, a location. Ranges from simple (product on a gradient) to complex (product integrated into a scene with realistic shadows, perspective, and lighting match). Time: 1-4 hours per image. Usually $100-$400+ per image depending on complexity.

Clipping Paths Creating precise vector mask around a product for use in print, packaging, or graphic design contexts. Time: 30-60 minutes per image. Usually $20-$60 per image.

What to Brief Before the Shoot -- Not After

The most common and expensive retouching mistake is treating post-production as a problem to solve later. Decisions made before and during the shoot determine how complex and expensive the retouching phase will be.

Specify the final background. "White background" is not specific enough. Do you need Amazon-compliant pure white? A warm off-white to match your brand? A specific hex value for overlay on your website? The photographer needs this before setting up the lighting and definitely before you evaluate raws.

Specify the output platforms. Amazon has specific technical requirements (pure white backgrounds, minimum 85% frame fill, no props in hero shots). Shopify is more flexible. Instagram stories have different crop ratios than grid posts. Knowing the end destination affects every decision in the shoot and post-production workflow.

Flag known product issues. If a product has a color inconsistency, a packaging imperfection, or a material that has historically been difficult to photograph, say so before the shoot. Your photographer can adjust the lighting approach, shooting angle, and post-production plan rather than discovering the problem after you've both invested hours.

Agree on what gets fixed vs. what is as-is. Surface defects that are inherent to handmade products might be brand features (imperfect texture in an artisan candle, variation in hand-dyed fabric). Decide whether these should be smoothed out or left as markers of authenticity. This is a brand decision, not a photography decision, and it has to come from you.

The "Just Fix It in Post" Problem

Post-production can fix many things. It cannot fix everything, and the things it can fix become exponentially more expensive to address when the problem could have been prevented in the shoot.

A common example: products that are photographed before final packaging arrives. The photographer shoots with a placeholder label, promising the client can "just swap it out in post." Sometimes that's true -- the label is flat, the angle is clean, and a composite is straightforward. Often, the lighting wraps around the label in a way that makes replacement extremely complex, or the label's position on a curved bottle creates perspective distortion that has to be matched precisely in the composite.

A three-hour retouching problem that "just" required swapping a label could have been a 30-minute reshooting problem with the correct label.

The same logic applies to: products with visible surface damage that could be cleaned or replaced, backgrounds that weren't properly exposed (cheap to do correctly in camera, expensive to fix in post), and any shoot where "we'll sort it out later" substitutes for decisions that needed to be made before the shutter opened.

File Formats and Deliverables

What should you actually receive when a shoot is complete? Professional standard deliverables:

For e-commerce: High-resolution JPEG (minimum 3000px on the long side), sRGB color space, 72-96 DPI (screen resolution -- print requires higher DPI at physical print size).

For print: TIFF or high-quality JPEG in the appropriate color space for the print vendor (usually CMYK for offset, sRGB for digital), at print size at 300 DPI minimum.

For both: Original layered PSD or TIFF files if you might need to make adjustments later or work with the files yourself.

Always request the originals. If a photographer refuses to provide original high-resolution files, that's a red flag. You should own your product images and be able to use them across every context without going back to the photographer for new exports.

Working With Your Photographer on Post-Production

The best retouching workflow involves review rounds:

1. First gallery: A representative set of edited images (not every shot, but a sample from each setup) that establishes the look and feel. 2. Review and feedback: Specific, written notes on what to adjust. Not "make it look better" -- "the background reads slightly warm, can you cool it to match the hex value in the brand guide" or "the front label has a reflection that's distracting, can you remove it." 3. Final delivery: Corrected files incorporating approved adjustments, delivered in all required formats and sizes.

If your photographer doesn't offer review rounds, request them. If they deliver finals without a review step and the colors are wrong, you've lost leverage.

If you're planning a product shoot and want to discuss the full workflow -- from pre-production through final delivery -- reach out here. I can walk through what's involved, what the deliverables will look like, and what the post-production process looks like from start to finish. You can also see finished examples across different product categories in the portfolio.