"Image editing" appears on a lot of quotes without anyone defining it, which is how a seller ends up paying for four hundred cutouts and receiving four hundred cutouts — accurate, delivered on time, and still visibly inconsistent because nobody agreed on colour, cropping or shadow treatment.
Most image editing services for ecommerce cover considerably more than removing a background. Knowing what sits inside the scope, what typically sits outside it, and which parts your particular catalogue actually needs is what makes the difference between a useful quote and an expensive surprise.
This article breaks down the work by category, explains where DIY editing usually goes wrong, and sets out how to brief a batch so the result is consistent. The specific mechanics of cutting products out — clipping paths, masking, hair and glass — are covered separately in product photo background removal; this one is about the wider scope.
What Ecommerce Image Editing Covers
Six categories of work, usually quoted together and worth separating when you brief.
1. Isolation and background work
Cutting the product out and placing it on white, on transparency, or on a replacement background. This is the best-known part and, on a typical catalogue, roughly half the work.
2. Cleanup and retouching
Removing what should not be visible: dust on dark surfaces, fingerprints on glass and metal, lint on fabric, scratches on packaging, a stray thread, a price sticker, a reflection of the photographer in a polished product. On shoes and bags this extends to removing stuffing, pins and support wires used during the shoot.
The judgement here matters. Removing dust is cleanup. Removing a genuine flaw that exists on the product the customer receives is misrepresentation, and it generates returns. A good editor asks where that line sits for your products rather than assuming.
3. Colour and exposure correction
Making the image accurate rather than attractive. White balance so whites read as white, exposure so the product is not lost in shadow, and colour correction so the navy jumper on screen is the navy jumper in the box.
This is quietly the highest-value category for apparel and homeware, because colour mismatch is a leading cause of returns — and returns cost more than editing.
4. Cropping, canvas and sizing
Consistent aspect ratio, consistent product margin, consistent alignment, and export at the dimensions each channel needs. Mechanical work that is almost entirely responsible for whether a catalogue page looks deliberate.
5. Shadows and reflections
Retaining and cleaning the natural shadow, constructing a drop shadow that follows the product's shape, or adding a reflection. The choice matters less than applying one treatment consistently.
6. Consistency across the set
The category most often omitted from quotes and most responsible for how a catalogue reads. Individual images can each be excellent while the set still looks assembled by different people.
What Usually Sits Outside the Scope
Worth confirming rather than assuming:
- Composite and lifestyle scenes — placing a product into an environment it was never photographed in.
- Ghost mannequin work for apparel, which combines several shots into one hollow-garment image. Usually priced separately because it is genuinely more work.
- Model retouching, which carries its own ethical and legal considerations in some markets.
- Infographic and listing graphics — the annotated secondary images with callouts and dimension diagrams. This is design work rather than photo editing.
- 3D rendering where no photograph exists.
- Video, which is a separate discipline.
- Rescuing genuinely bad photography. Editing improves an adequate photo; it does not replace a sharp, well-lit one. Out-of-focus images cannot be fixed.
| Work | Typically included | Usually quoted separately |
|---|---|---|
| Background removal to white | Yes | |
| Transparent PNG version | Often | Sometimes |
| Dust and blemish cleanup | Yes | |
| Colour and exposure correction | Yes | |
| Crop, canvas, resize | Yes | |
| Shadow work | Often | For constructed shadows |
| Ghost mannequin | Yes | |
| Lifestyle composites | Yes | |
| Listing infographics | Yes — design work | |
| Layered master files | Often, ask upfront |
Where DIY Editing Goes Wrong
Editing your own images is entirely reasonable at low volume. The failures are predictable:
- Drift across a batch. The first fifty images set a standard and the last fifty diverge, because each was judged on its own rather than against the set.
- Colour shifts introduced while brightening. A quick exposure lift often pushes the product's colour, which is worse than the original problem.
- Over-sharpening, producing halos around edges that look crisp at thumbnail size and artificial when zoomed.
- Heavy-handed cleanup, smoothing texture out of fabric and leather so the product looks synthetic.
- Inconsistent margins, with one product filling the frame and the next floating in space.
- Working from compressed exports rather than originals, so quality degrades with each save.
- No layered masters, meaning any later change to shadow style or canvas size means starting again.
- Checking at thumbnail size, where none of the above is visible.
Preparing Images for Online Stores
Requirements vary by platform and by category, and they change, so check the current documentation for the channels you actually sell on rather than relying on any general guide, including this one.
What holds broadly true:
- Marketplaces are stricter than your own store. Major marketplaces typically specify main-image rules covering background, how much of the frame the product fills, and what may appear in the image — and some enforce these automatically. Your own Shopify or WooCommerce store generally lets you set your own convention.
- Square is the safest default for product listings, since most storefronts crop to square somewhere.
- Resolution should support zoom. Higher-resolution images enable zoom on most platforms, which matters for considered purchases.
- Keep file sizes sensible. Oversized images slow product pages, and page speed affects the shopping experience.
- Keep both flattened and transparent versions. White-background files for listings, transparent PNGs for banners and ads.
- Name files consistently, ideally including the SKU. This saves more time than it appears to when a catalogue is updated.
A note on claims: you will see specific conversion-rate figures attached to product photography in a lot of marketing material. Treat them sceptically — the credible general statement is that clear, consistent, accurate imagery helps customers understand what they are buying and reduces returns from mismatched expectations. Precise percentage promises are not something anyone can honestly guarantee for your catalogue.
Quality Control for a Batch
Large batches fail through drift rather than disaster. A workable process:
- Write the specification first — canvas size and ratio, product margin, alignment, background treatment, shadow style, colour reference, file formats, naming convention.
- Approve a pilot batch of ten images covering your hardest cases before the rest begins.
- Group similar products so consistent settings apply across a run.
- Review edges at 100%, not at thumbnail size.
- Check colour against a physical sample where colour accuracy matters, on a calibrated screen if you have one.
- View the finished set as a grid. Inconsistency is invisible one image at a time and obvious in a contact sheet.
- Spot-check on a phone, since that is where most customers will see them.
- Keep layered masters so the specification can change later without redoing the work.
What to Send When You Outsource
A complete brief keeps the price down and the revisions few:
- Original camera files, not compressed exports or images pulled from your website.
- Your specification, or a request for one to be proposed.
- Reference images showing the look you want — more useful than any written description.
- Colour references and, where accuracy is critical, a physical sample or a known-good image.
- Which channels the images are for, so output sizes and rules are right first time.
- Your flaw policy — what may be cleaned and what must remain visible.
- Whether you need layered masters, transparent versions, or both.
- A realistic volume and deadline.
How Editing Work Is Usually Priced
Quotes vary widely, but the factors behind them are consistent, and understanding them helps you scope a batch sensibly.
- Per image, not per hour, for most catalogue work — which means the per-image rate depends heavily on the product type.
- Product complexity. A boxed item on a clean sweep is straightforward. Jewellery, glassware, fur, mesh and garments with loose edges take several times longer.
- Source quality. Well-lit, sharp, consistently shot images cost less to edit than a mixed set photographed over months in different conditions.
- Number of outputs per product. One white-background listing image is one thing; a listing image, a transparent version and two crops is four.
- Shadow treatment. Retaining a natural shadow is quicker than constructing one.
- Volume. Larger batches usually attract a lower per-image rate, because the specification work is amortised.
- Turnaround. Compressed deadlines cost more everywhere.
Send a genuinely representative sample when requesting a quote — including your hardest products, not just the easy ones. A price based on your simplest items will be revised once the real catalogue arrives, and that conversation is better had at the start.
When Outsourcing Is Worth It
Keep it in-house for a handful of images, simple opaque products and good contrast. The tools are capable and the time cost is small.
Outsource when volume makes consistency the real problem rather than any single image; when the catalogue contains difficult materials such as glass, jewellery, fabric or hair; when colour accuracy genuinely affects returns; when listings have been rejected over image compliance; when an existing catalogue has accumulated several visual conventions and needs unifying; or when the same images must also serve ads and banners and therefore need transparent masters.
The economics are usually straightforward at volume: a few hundred images represents days of internal time that nobody has budgeted, and internal time is rarely cheaper than it looks.
Conclusion
Ecommerce image editing is a production process with six distinct parts, and most disappointing outcomes come from quoting only the first one. Isolation gets the attention; colour accuracy and set consistency are what customers actually notice.
Whatever you decide about outsourcing, write the specification before the first image is touched. It is the cheapest thing you can do and it prevents almost every problem described above.
Getting a Catalogue Edited
SBTEXMEDIA provides ecommerce image editing for online sellers, retailers, product brands, photographers and agencies — background removal and clipping paths, dust and blemish cleanup, colour and exposure correction, consistent cropping and canvas sizing, shadow work, and catalogue-wide consistency, delivered as white-background listing images, transparent PNGs or layered masters. Existing catalogues can be audited and brought into line rather than reshot.
Related work on background removal technique, vector tracing and graphic design is handled by the same team, which helps when product images also feed listing graphics and marketing material.
You can see examples on the portfolio, browse the full range of services, or send a few sample images and your specification for a fixed quote and a delivery date before work starts. More guides are on the SBTEXMEDIA blog.
