AI or a photographer? Work out your own number instead of trusting anyone else's

Every comparison you read is written by someone selling one of the two options, with prices from a market that is not yours. So start with your own quote.

Write to two photographers near you. Ask for the exact job: this many products, this many angles each, on white, delivered retouched. Then ask what it costs to add a product later.

The second answer is where the cost hides. A one-off shoot is a known number. A catalogue that grows by a few products a month means a new booking each time, or products photographed differently from the rest.

Whichever way you go, the price on the quote is not the whole cost.

Your own hours

Packing and posting the products, being there, reviewing proofs, asking for changes. Count them honestly and put your own hourly rate against them.

The wait

From booking to usable files, how many days? Multiply by what an unlisted product costs you. For a seasonal item this can be more than the whole invoice.

Rework

Your packaging changes. A platform wants another aspect ratio. A campaign needs a seasonal background. With a shoot, each of those is a new job, and this recurring cost separates the two routes more than the first invoice does.

Attempts that fail

Some generated images are unusable: a mangled label, a changed product, a shadow that does not work. Cost the two or three attempts an image really takes, not the one that worked. Eight AI product photo mistakes lists what to look for.

Write down, for one year:

• Products you will list.
• Images per product.
• Ad creatives per month.
• Seasonal or campaign versions.

Then price both routes across that whole year, with your hours and the rework, not across one shoot. The comparison only means something over a period long enough to hold the second and third time you need a picture.

For the generated side, use real prices. On ProduktShot a product photo costs from 2.5 credits, the Starter plan is €29 a month for 250 credits, and you start with 16 credits free. The price of every job is on the pricing page. What a shoot costs is in how much product photography costs.

These cases are real, and a tool's own marketing will not list them.

Texture is the product

Jewellery, knitwear, leather, ceramics, anything handmade. The fine surface is the reason for the price, and it is exactly what generation smooths away.

Food that has to look edible

Food styling is a craft. Food that is slightly wrong does not read as an imperfect photo; it reads as not appetising.

Anything with text that must be read

Packaging, labels, ingredient lists, instructions. Generated small text is still unreliable, and a wrong label can mislead a buyer.

Regulated categories

Cosmetics, supplements, medical devices. What an image may suggest is limited there, and a generated image that suggests a result you cannot claim is a bigger risk than a plain photo.

The customer is buying you

If part of the offer is that a person makes it by hand in a workshop, photos of that person and that workshop do what no generated scene can.

For most small shops the answer is not one or the other.

• Photograph once: the product itself, well lit, with its real texture and real label. Everything else is built from this photo, so it is worth paying for or learning: how to photograph a product with a phone.
• Generate repeatedly: the settings. Backgrounds, seasons, lifestyle scenes, ad versions, marketplace crops. They change all the time and nobody can afford to reshoot them.

So the real question is rarely whether to replace your photographer. It is how many times you need the same product in a different setting. For a shop that runs ads, the honest answer is usually many. AI product photos or a photoshoot compares the two side by side.