How to take product photos with a phone

To take good product photos with a phone, set the product on a white background next to a window, turn off the flash and the room lights, shoot from several angles and keep the framing identical across products. You do not need professional equipment. The whole setup fits on a table.

What you need

• Your phone, with a clean lens.
• A table next to a large window.
• A sheet of white poster board, plus tape or clamps.
• A second white board or sheet of printer paper, to bounce light.

Step 1: build a white sweep

Tape the poster board to a wall or a box behind the table, and let it curve down onto the tabletop. This curve, called a sweep, removes the line between table and wall, so the product seems to sit on a seamless background.

Step 2: use the window as your light

Shopify’s product photography guide recommends window light, because indoor bulbs and built-in flashes create harsh contrast. Turn off the other lights in the room and keep direct sun off the set.

Distance changes the result. Close to the window, the light is softer and the shadows are darker. Further away, the light is more even and the shadows are lighter and sharper. Try both with a test shot.

If one side of the product falls too dark, stand the white board on that side to bounce light back. A black board does the opposite and helps a white product stand out from a white background.

Step 3: set up the phone

1. Turn the flash off.
2. Leave white balance on automatic.
3. Choose the highest image quality in the camera settings.
4. Do not use digital zoom, which only crops the picture and lowers its quality. Move the phone closer instead, or use an optical lens if your phone has one.

Step 4: shoot the angles buyers want

Shoot eye level, then a high angle, a low angle and a view from directly above. Add close-ups of what a buyer would check in a store, such as a zipper, a texture or a label. Our guide on how many photos a product page needs helps you decide when to stop.

Shopify’s tip here saves a lot of editing: rotate the product, not the camera. The framing stays the same, and so does the distance. Check a few test shots on a larger screen before you shoot the whole range, because small problems are easy to miss on a phone.

Step 5: keep the whole range consistent

On a collection page, your photos sit side by side, and differences jump out. Leave the phone, the table and the board in the same place until you finish. Use the same distance and the same ratio for every product. If you shoot over several days, try to shoot at the same time of day, since window light changes.

Step 6: edit lightly, then upload

Crop, straighten and brighten the background until it looks white. Keep the colors true, because a product that arrives looking different from its photo invites returns.

You can do this inside Shopify. Its media editor crops, resizes, and uses AI to remove or replace a background. Then check the recommended Shopify image sizes and upload your files from the Media section of each product.

From photos to a finished store

Once your photos are ready, the rest of the job is placing them, one product at a time. Forgefont sorts your images, writes the alt text and puts each one in the right section of your Shopify store. See the plans to find the one that matches your number of products.