Why your product photos look flat, and the four things that fix it

Ask two questions of the photo. Where does the light come from? Where does the shadow fall? If the light comes from the left, the shadow belongs on the right, attached to the product where it meets the surface.

The most common failure is a soft grey blur sitting evenly under the object like a cushion. Nothing in the physical world makes that shadow.

The second is no contact shadow at all. Where an object touches a surface, the gap between them is nearly black, because almost no light gets in. That dark line glues the product to the table. Without it the product floats, however well the rest is lit. It is the first thing to check in an AI-generated product photo.

Every surface returns some light. Glass and polished stone return a lot, matte paper almost none, brushed wood a little and blurred.

So the test is not whether there is a reflection, but whether it belongs to this surface. A crisp mirror image under a product standing on linen is wrong. A product on wet slate with no reflection at all is wrong too.

If you are unsure, take the surface away. A plain background with a good contact shadow is honest and sells fine. A surface you cannot light correctly is worse than none.

Put a real object in real light. One side of its outline is bright where the light catches it. The other side is darker and blends into what is behind it.

A cut-out has the same crisp edge all the way round, often with a hairline of the old background still on it. That even edge is what makes a picture look pasted.

The fix is not a filter. Light the product so one edge separates from the background and the other does not have to.

If the camera is above the product, you see the top of the product and the top of the surface it stands on, and the back of the surface sits higher in the frame than the front.

When the two disagree, with the product shot straight on and the table shot from above, readers notice at once and report it as "something is off". It is rare in a photograph and common in a composite, because the two halves came from two cameras.

Before any product image goes live, ask:

• Is there a dark line where the product touches the surface?
• Does the shadow fall away from the light?
• Does the reflection suit this material, or is there rightly none?
• Is one side of the outline brighter than the other?
• Do I see the product and the surface from the same height?

Four yes answers out of five is fine. Two is what makes a customer close the tab without knowing why.

Building a new scene around a product handles shadow, reflection and edge light well, because they follow from the scene the model builds. ProduktShot's product photos do this from one photo of your product, with 103 ready-made scenes to start from, from 2.5 credits an image. For a cut-out on plain white, the free product shadow generator adds a contact shadow or a reflection in your browser.

No tool fixes a product that is badly lit in the source photo: blown out on one side, or lit flat by a phone flash. The scene will convince and the product in the middle of it will not. Fix the source first: how to photograph a product with a phone.