Answer in brief
Retouching brings a photograph in line with how the product looks in life; it does not improve the product. Here is the scope of the work, the line of honesty, the platform requirements and a checklist that accepts a listing in fifteen minutes.
What retouching is and what it is not
Retouching brings a photograph in line with how the object looks in life; it does not improve the object. The distinction sounds philosophical, and it is what decides how many revisions there will be and whether goods come back.
The scope includes cleaning: dust, lint, fingerprints, scratches on the packaging film, stray highlights from a light. All of that is less visible on set than it is on the buyer's screen.
Then comes geometry: levelling the horizon, correcting the tilt that turns a straight box into a trapezoid, restoring symmetry where the object really is symmetrical.
And finally light and colour: evening out exposure across a series and bringing the shade to the one the buyer will see when the item comes out of the box.
What the volume of work is made of
Counting retouching "per photo" is convenient and inaccurate: two shots of the same product can differ several times over in effort, usually because of how they were taken.
The first multiplier is the difficulty of the object. A matte box cleans up in minutes. Chrome, glass, fur and anything that reflects its surroundings need hand work, because the studio is visible in the reflection.
The second is the state of the original. A frame with even light on a clean background barely needs intervention. A frame shot on a phone under a ceiling lamp has to be rewritten almost entirely.
The third is the number of angles and variants. One product in five colours is not five jobs but one job and four recolours, and it should be priced differently.
Background: white, coloured and real
White is not the absence of a decision but a requirement on most platforms. It looks simple, and it is exactly where every cut-out flaw shows: a ragged edge, a leftover halo, lost fine detail.
A separate problem is what counts as white. Pure white on screen can merge with the page background, leaving the object floating with no edges. The background is usually made near-white so the tile still reads.
A coloured background solves the problem of standing out in a feed, but it has to be agreed with the brand palette and checked for contrast with whatever text lands on it.
A real background — a table, fabric, an interior — sells a mood but works poorly in a catalogue with twenty neighbours alongside. A sensible arrangement is the first frame on white and the rest in a scene.
Colour: why it does not match
The complaint "the colour on the site is different" arrives in almost every project, and retouching is rarely to blame. There are usually three causes, and all of them are technical.
The first is the light on set. Lamps of different temperature give a different cast, and if white balance is not set against a reference, grey turns yellowish or bluish along with the whole frame.
The second is colour space. An image saved in a wide space and opened by a browser as an ordinary one loses saturation. For the web the file has to be in the standard space with its profile embedded.
The third is the buyer's screen. Nobody calibrates it, and there will be no absolute match. So the colour is named in words in the description, and critical shades are shown next to a familiar object.
Where the line of honesty runs
The rule is simple: you may remove what will not be there in the buyer's copy. Dust, lint and a fingerprint disappear during unboxing anyway. A seam, a gap and a texture do not.
So seams must not be removed, gaps must not be evened out, fabric structure must not be erased and saturation must not be pushed. The buyer checks all of it on day one and returns the item as "not as described".
A zone of its own is size and proportion. A stretched frame makes an item slimmer or bulkier, and in clothing that is the discrepancy the buyer meets at the first fitting.
It helps to put this list in the contract as one line: what may be removed and what may not. Then an argument about a specific frame takes a minute instead of becoming a discussion of taste.
Shadow and contact with the surface
The shadow is the only thing holding an object on a plane. An image without one looks pasted on, and that is noticeable even to someone who never thinks about light.
A natural shadow is photographed together with the product and preserved through the cut-out. That is the best option: it agrees with the light on the object itself and requires no invention.
A drawn shadow is needed when the background changes. It is made soft, aimed the same way as the key light, and kept identical across the whole series — otherwise the catalogue falls apart.
A reflection under the object suits glass, hardware and glossy packaging, and is entirely out of place under clothing and soft items, where it does not occur in life.
Formats and export
The same shot has to exist in several forms, and confusion here costs more than the retouching itself. Separate three things: the original, the master file and the platform files.
The original is what came out of the camera, and it must never be overwritten. The master is the processed image at full resolution, in layers, from which any size can be assembled.
The platform files are derivatives: the required size, the required format, the required weight. They are rebuilt every time requirements change, and never edited by hand.
For the web, modern formats give noticeably lower weight at the same quality, but older formats are still needed as a fallback. The list of formats is settled once for the whole catalogue.
Platform requirements
Every platform has its own set of requirements for a listing, and they differ in the small details that break an upload: minimum size, how much of the frame the object fills, the permitted background, watermarks.
The most common divergence is the margin around the object. One platform wants the product filling nearly the whole frame, another wants air around it. The same file will not satisfy both.
The second is text on the image. Some platforms forbid it outright, some allow it on secondary frames. That has to be checked before a designer assembles two hundred tiles with labels on them.
The third is square versus vertical. A frame shot for a square cannot become vertical without loss, so proportions are decided on set rather than in processing.
Timing and what drives it
Timing is driven not by the number of photographs but by the number of decisions. Fifty near-identical frames of one product process faster than ten different products with different backgrounds.
The first delay is almost always approving the reference. Until one frame is signed off as the standard for colour, light and cropping, making the rest is pointless: they will be redone.
The second is originals arriving in instalments. A batch delivered in pieces takes longer than the sum of its pieces, because every pass means restoring the settings from scratch.
The third is revisions without a list. Three emails with one remark each cost more than one email with three, and that is the only part of the timeline the client controls directly.
How the price is built
A transparent scheme looks like this: a price per frame by difficulty band, a separate line for preparing the reference, and another for rebuilding into platform formats.
The difficulty band is settled on a test frame before the batch starts. One shot is processed, and from it both sides understand which group the whole set belongs to.
The rebuild for platforms is priced separately because it does not depend on the difficulty of the object: it is mechanical work against a list of sizes, and its volume is known in advance.
At VITON13 image work sits inside the design packages: Brand Sprint at $120 over 1–2 working days, Launch Landing at $290 over 3–5 working days, Product Identity System at $540 over 5–8 working days. Photography is the exclusion named on Brand Sprint and is not covered by the price.
What the handover must contain
A handover consisting of a folder of pictures guarantees that in six months you return to the same supplier not by choice but because there is nobody else to go to.
A complete set has the layered master files, the final images in every agreed size and format, and a short note on the settings: how it was cropped, which background, which shadow.
Separately, the reference frame, marked as the reference. It is the file the next batch is checked against, and without it the catalogue's consistency rests on one person's memory.
And a naming scheme. Article code, angle, size — in the file name, not in the folder structure. Folders break on the first migration; names survive everything.
The acceptance checklist
Open the frame at full size and look at the edge of the object. A ragged boundary, a pale halo and lost fine detail are visible only there.
Compare the series in a row rather than one at a time. Drift in brightness and in how large the object sits in the frame shows only side by side, and it is exactly what ruins a catalogue.
Check the colour against the real product in daylight, not from memory. If there is no match, deal with the light on set rather than with retouching settings.
And look at the tile at the size the buyer sees on a phone. Half the remarks that matter on a large screen simply do not exist there.
Practical checklist
- Approve one reference frame for colour, light and cropping before the batch starts.
- Put in the contract what may be removed and what may not.
- Collect every platform's rules on margins, text and proportions before assembling tiles.
- Require layered master files, not only finished pictures.
- Compare the series in a row rather than frame by frame.
- Review the result at the size the buyer sees on a phone.
Questions and answers
What exactly does product retouching include?
Cleaning (dust, lint, fingerprints, stray highlights), geometry (horizon, tilt, symmetry) and light and colour: evening out exposure across a series and bringing the shade to the real one. Anything that changes the product itself — seams, gaps, texture, proportions — is not retouching.
Why does the colour on the site differ from the item?
Usually for three reasons: white balance was not set against a reference on set, the file was saved in a wide colour space without an embedded profile, or the buyer's screen is uncalibrated. The first two are solved technically; the third is solved by naming the shade in the description.
How many frames can be processed in a day?
Timing is driven by the number of decisions, not frames. Fifty near-identical frames of one product go faster than ten different products with different backgrounds. The first delay is almost always approving the reference frame, without which the rest have to be redone.
What does this cost at VITON13 for “Product Photo Retouching: What the Work Covers, How Long It Takes, How to Accept It”?
Image work sits inside the design packages: Brand Sprint at $120 over 1–2 working days with two revision rounds on the chosen direction; Launch Landing at $290 over 3–5 working days with two rounds after the first full layout; Product Identity System at $540 over 5–8 working days with three rounds across the system. Photography and copywriting are the exclusion named on Brand Sprint; Launch Landing excludes development and Product Identity System excludes printed production. For this case, the decision criterion is specific: Effort is set by reflective surfaces and the state of the original, not by the number of frames.
Which files should I receive at the end?
Layered master files at full resolution, the final images in every agreed size and format, the reference frame marked as such, and a short note on the cropping, background and shadow settings. Plus a naming scheme: article code, angle and size in the file name.