Product photography in China – questions from overseas buyers, answered

Yes – that is the core of what we do. Our studio is in Shanghai and we photograph your goods while they are still in China, before your order ships. For an importer that removes both the cost and the delay of sending samples to your own country first and then paying a local studio to shoot them.

The studio has been operating in Shanghai since 2002, and we have been working this way for overseas buyers since 2016. Finished files are delivered to you online, sized and ready to upload. Most of our clients have never shipped a sample out of China and have never visited us.

No. Most of our clients have never visited the studio.

We shoot against a written shot list that you approve before we start. At the end of the shooting day we email you low-resolution preview frames of everything we shot; you pick the frames you want and tell us what to change; retouching begins only after your selection comes back. That sequence matters – it means no retouching hours are ever spent on a frame you did not choose, and nothing reaches you as a surprise.

If you want to watch live, we can open a video link from the set over WhatsApp or WeChat International and take your direction in real time. We have run shoots that way. It is optional, and most clients do not need it.

Yes, and we would rather you did. A single product is fine, and a large share of our clients start exactly that way.

Two things make it easy. If you sell apparel, we photograph your first garment free – three main angles plus the detail shots the piece needs, 9 to 11 finished images, fully retouched, no watermark and no obligation to order – and we pay the shipping to get it to us from anywhere in China, so you can judge the actual output rather than our portfolio before you commit anything. For other categories we shoot one item as a free test shot on white. The free piece is still photography only, once, for a new client, and it does not cover highly reflective or transparent goods, which take far longer to light. And there is no minimum order and no minimum spend: small batches are simply priced at a higher published rate per unit, which you can read on our pricing page before you ask us anything.

Once you have seen how we work, repeat batches run faster and cost less per image: your shot list, lighting setup and retouching standard are on file, and we reproduce them exactly instead of starting again. Consistency across a listing gallery is the thing a one-off freelancer cannot give you, and it is the reason clients stay.

We publish our starting prices instead of asking you to enquire first.

E-commerce images on a white background start at US$18 each. Ghost mannequin is US$45 per garment for 9 to 11 finished images – three main angles plus the detail shots the piece needs – and flat lay is US$26 per garment for 7 to 8 finished images. Apparel is billed per piece, and nothing about the piece changes that: not the size, not the colour, not the SKU, and not whether it is a top, a bottom or part of a set. Product video starts at US$450 per cut, and a typical complete CGI project runs US$1,800 to US$2,500. The full list – volume steps, annual framework rates and the reasons one product costs more to shoot than another – is on our pricing page.

Two things are worth knowing before you ask. We quote per shot list and never per hour, so you see a price against every line before anything is shot and the invoice cannot grow afterwards. And there is no minimum order and no minimum spend – fewer than 10 garments is simply priced at US$68 each instead of US$45 – so a single SKU is fine. A volume step applies to the whole order once you reach it: nine garments are US$68 each, but add a tenth and all ten are US$45.

Send us your product list and the platform you sell on, and you will have a written, itemised quote within one working day. No charge, no obligation.

You do. On final payment, full and unrestricted ownership of every delivered image transfers to you, worldwide and in perpetuity, with no additional licence fee.

You may use them for marketplace listings, your own website, paid advertising, print, packaging and social media, and you may crop, retouch or composite them however you like. We do not charge separately for usage rights, media, territory or duration, and we never licence your product images to anyone else.

Until you launch the product publicly, the images are confidential and are shown to nobody. The one thing we keep is this: after your public launch we may show a few of the images in our own portfolio, non-commercially, with your branding and any identifying detail removed. If you would rather we did not, tell us in writing and we won’t.

Yes. We sign your NDA before you send any specification, artwork or sample – or we can provide ours. Our standard contract also carries its own confidentiality clause, so you are covered even if no separate NDA is signed.

We are a photography studio only. We do not manufacture, trade or sell products, so we have no commercial interest in your design and nothing to gain from it existing anywhere other than your listing.

Images of an unreleased product are never published, never used in our marketing and never shown to another client without your written permission. Files are delivered to you privately, and we do not resell or re-licence them.

Once the samples are in the studio and the shot list is approved: three to five working days for e-commerce images on white – three for a standard batch, five when the set is large or the surfaces are glass, metal or mirror and each frame takes longer to light. Retouched on-model or styled-scene apparel images take three working days. A first cut of a 15 to 30 second video takes three working days after the storyboard is signed off.

Small urgent sets run on a separate track. If ten standard products or fewer are already in the studio, we can deliver finished, retouched files on white within 24 hours – the shoot and the retouching run back to back on the same day. Tell us at quoting stage so we can hold the slot. Highly reflective, glass and jewellery items are not on the 24-hour track: those take longer to light properly, and we would rather tell you that now than miss your deadline.

Large multi-SKU batches are delivered in stages as standard, so you can start uploading your first listings while the rest is still in production rather than waiting for the whole set.

If you have a fixed launch date, tell us when you ask for the quote. We will confirm in writing whether it is achievable before you pay anything.

Every quote includes two rounds of revisions on retouching. Colour, background cleanup, cropping, shadows and file format are all adjusted at no extra cost until they match the brief you approved.

If we have shot something that does not match the approved shot list, that is our mistake, and we reshoot it at our own cost – not yours.

Work that goes beyond the approved brief – a new angle, a different set, an extra SKU – is quoted before we start it and never added to your invoice afterwards. Revisions past the second round are charged at a small per-image rate shown on your quote, so you always know where the line sits before you cross it.

High-resolution retouched JPEGs in sRGB, sized for the platform you sell on. For Amazon that means pure white (RGB 255,255,255) at 2,000 pixels on the longest side and under 10 MB – comfortably above the 1,600 pixels the zoom function needs.

Transparent-background PNGs are included free. Most studios sell cutouts as an add-on; we don’t, because you will need them the moment you build your own banners or A+ modules and we would rather you had them from the start.

Square and vertical crops for social, and print-resolution files for catalogues and packaging, are available on request.

Delivery is by email attachment for small sets and Google Drive for larger ones – never a Chinese-only file service you cannot open from your own country. We keep your project files for six months, so a re-export, a different crop or a replacement file inside that window costs you nothing.

Yes, and we put it in writing: if Amazon rejects a main image we delivered on technical grounds, we correct it and re-deliver at no charge.

Main images are delivered on pure white (RGB 255,255,255) with the product filling at least 85% of the frame, as sRGB JPEG at 2,000 pixels on the longest side and under 10 MB, with no text, logo, watermark, border or props.

The remaining gallery slots are planned rather than filled at random – scale, detail, in-use and infographic images. We design the infographics and A+ content modules ourselves, in house, which is why they match the photography instead of looking like they came from a different supplier.

For apparel, main-image rules differ by sub-category in Seller Central’s style guides. Tell us your exact category and we will confirm in writing which treatment is compliant before we shoot, not after.

Yes – and with one person rather than a queue.

The studio owner handles all project communication in written English personally: quoting, shot lists, approvals and delivery. Nothing is relayed to you through a salesperson who was not in the studio when your product was photographed. Shot lists, invoices and delivery notes are issued in English.

If you would rather talk than write, we have an English-speaking colleague for calls and we will schedule one inside your working hours.

We work to China Standard Time (UTC+8) and reply to every message within 24 hours on working days. In practice a message you send at the end of your day is usually answered before you start the next one.

All three are core business here and have been for over twenty years, which means we have no reason to push you towards the most expensive one.

Flat lay is the lowest cost and the right answer for basics and accessories. Ghost mannequin shows the true shape of the garment on a clean background and is the workhorse of marketplace galleries – it is one of our main lines and we can show you a large number of examples, including inner back-collar detail, which is where most ghost mannequin work falls apart. On-model converts best and earns its cost wherever fit and styling are what actually sell the garment.

We will tell you which one your product needs, including when the answer is the cheap one.

Amazon’s apparel main-image rules vary by sub-category, so we confirm the compliant treatment against the Seller Central style guide for your category before the shoot. And because the sample is already in our hands, we can produce more than one treatment from it in a single session – flat lay for the gallery and ghost mannequin for the main image, without a second shipment or a second setup fee.