What a packshot is, where it's used, and how to shoot one - camera settings, lighting, angles, tricky packaging, and the image specs marketplaces ask for.
Table of contents
Packshot photography is a style of product photography that shows a product - often with its packaging and label - on its own, usually against a plain white background, so buyers see exactly what they'll get. There are no props, no models, and no scene. A good packshot is sharp, color-accurate, evenly lit, and consistent with every other image in your catalog.
This guide covers what a packshot is, where it's used, the camera and lighting setup, how to handle tricky packaging, the image specs UK marketplaces ask for, and how to produce packshots at scale.
A packshot is a clean, informative image of a product, shot so the buyer can judge its shape, color, texture, and label without distraction. The term comes from advertising, where the packshot is the shot of the product and its pack, often at the end of a TV commercial. In e-commerce, it now means the main product image on a white or neutral background. You'll also see it written as "pack shot".
Simplicity is the point. A packshot gives as much product information as possible, and nothing else.
| Packshot | Lifestyle | Still life | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it shows | The product alone, often with packaging | The product in use or in a real setting | The product in an artistic composition |
| Background | White, transparent, or plain color | A real scene, often with people | Styled set with props |
| Main job | Inform - show exactly what the buyer gets | Inspire - show how it fits their life | Attract - build mood and brand image |
| Where it's used | Main product image, marketplaces, catalogs | Secondary images, social, ads | Campaigns, editorial, print |
| Consistency across SKUs | Essential | Less important | Not expected |
Wolf & Badger, the London-based marketplace, is a good example of how the two work together: its apparel image guidelines require at least one front-facing cut-out packshot on a pure white background, and strongly recommend model and lifestyle shots on top.
No. What makes a packshot is how you photograph the product, not the background color. The three common options:
| Background | When to use it |
|---|---|
| White (RGB 255/255/255) | Primary images on marketplaces and retailer sites; the GS1 standard's default |
| Transparent (PNG or clipped TIFF) | Images that will be placed on different backgrounds - banners, catalogs, montages |
| Plain color (including black) | Brand pages, campaigns, and social posts where color ties products to a brand look |
That said, if the image is the main image on a marketplace, white is usually the rule, not a choice.
Whether you're building a corner setup or a full in-house product photography studio, the kit list is similar:
| Equipment | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Camera with manual controls | You need to lock aperture, ISO, and white balance so every product in a range looks the same |
| Macro lens, ideally 1:1 | Small products and label text need close focus and fine detail |
| Standard lens (around 50 mm) | Natural perspective for medium and large products |
| Tripod or fixed camera arm | Repeatable framing across hundreds of shots |
| Continuous lights or flash, with softboxes and diffusers | Soft, even light that shows shape and color honestly |
| White and black cards | White cards fill shadows; black cards define edges on glossy surfaces |
| Shooting table or light tent | A white, curved surface with no visible horizon line, for small and medium products |
| Turntable | Consistent rotation for multi-angle shots and 360° spins |
Show us what you sell, and we'll show you exactly how to capture it - packshots, video, and product data, captured live from your sample.
A full-frame sensor measures about 36 × 24 mm; an APS-C sensor is smaller, around 23.5 × 15.6 mm (the exact size varies by brand). At the same framing and aperture, APS-C gives you more depth of field, so more of the product is sharp front to back. That helps with packshots, where you want the whole product in focus. Full-frame gives you more detail and cleaner images in low light, but you may need focus stacking for small products.
Most retouching time is spent fixing things that could have been fixed before the shutter clicked. Before each shoot:
For a full checklist, read how to prepare products for a photography session.
Start here and adjust per product type:
Write your settings down, or save them in a template, so the next shoot matches the last one. Tethering software makes this easier - you control the camera from a computer, check every frame on a big screen, and reuse the same settings session after session.
A packshot has one job: show the product as faithfully as possible. Shape, texture, and color need to look the way they do in real life, because that's what the buyer is paying for.
For a full walkthrough, read our product photography lighting guide. For white or pale products, see shooting white products on a white background.
The "pack" in packshot is often the hardest part. Glossy boxes, bottles, jars, and blister packs reflect your lights, and glass or clear plastic can disappear into a white background.
Reflections you can't avoid at capture can be handled later - AI Retoucher removes reflections and blemishes while keeping the product real. And if you need the label data itself, not just the picture, AI OCR extracts it from the packaging during the shoot.
Pick one angle set per product category and use it for every SKU. The GS1 Product Image Specification numbers its standard views (1 = front, 2 = left, 3 = top, 7 = back, 8 = right, 9 = bottom) and prefers a center front view taken at 15° elevation. A practical shot list:
| Shot | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Front (primary image) | The product as the buyer recognizes it on the shelf |
| Front at 15° elevation | A little depth, so it reads as a 3D object |
| Back | Ingredients, nutrition, or technical label |
| Left and right sides | Profile and depth |
| Top | Lids, closures, or controls |
| Detail close-ups | Texture, stitching, finish, label print |
| 360° spin (optional) | Every side, controlled by the buyer |
Some categories need their own approach. See our guides for large products, clothing, and flat lay fashion. Jewelry gets its own section below.
| Channel or standard | Key packshot requirements |
|---|---|
| Amazon UK | Main image on pure white (RGB 255/255/255); product fills about 85% of the frame; 1,000 px or more on the longest side to enable zoom; no text, logos, borders, or watermarks |
| eBay UK | At least one photo 500 px on the longest side; no borders, added text, or watermarks; no stock photos for used or damaged items |
| Google Merchant Center (Google Shopping) | 500 × 500 px minimum (the new requirement applies from 31 January 2027), 1,500 × 1,500 px or above recommended; product fills 75-90% of the image; no borders, watermarks, or promotional overlays; max 16 MB |
| Wolf & Badger | 1,500 × 1,500 px square JPEG under 1 MB; pure white background for the primary cut-out packshot; no logos or text |
| GS1 Product Image Specification (Release 4.4) | Background removed to white (RGB 255/255/255); clipping path recommended; web primary images 900 × 900 to 2,400 × 2,400 px - read more on how automation helps meet GS1 image standards |
A useful rule of thumb: shoot at 2,400 × 2,400 px or more and export smaller versions per channel. You can always scale down. You can't scale up.
Post-production usually has four stages (our post-production guide covers each in detail):
Don't overdo it. A packshot that makes a product look a different color or texture misleads the buyer, and that's how returns start. Edit to clean up the image, not to change what the product looks like.
Selling into the EU as well? Read what the EU AI Act means for product photography - it adds disclosure rules for AI-generated or altered images.
Yes. Background removal, cropping, alignment, and contrast or sharpness adjustments can all be automated, and done in seconds instead of minutes per image. Automation also standardizes output across a team, because every image runs through the same template.
The difference is where it starts. Most AI background removal works on the finished photo, so it guesses where the product ends. Orbitvu's IQ Mask (how AI Masking works) uses a separate capture to separate the product from the background, so the product keeps its real shape and natural shadow. You can see the difference in our video, Product photography | Automated vs Manual - background removal.
Jewelry is the hardest packshot category: small, reflective, and full of detail buyers zoom in on. For more on this, read our 10 jewelry photography tips.
M U Jewellers shows what this looks like in practice. Using Alphashot Micro with Superfocus (Orbitvu's focus stacking), the team gets hallmark numbers and stone quality visible in every shot - which, in their words, helps "validate the jewelry." Read the M U Jewellers case study.
| Shooting table | Automated photography studio | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A curved white plexiglass or plastic surface, backlit to create a white background | Camera, lights, turntable, and software working as one system |
| Setup per product | Lights and camera arranged by hand; needs flash and lighting know-how | Loaded from a saved template |
| Consistency across a catalog | Depends on the photographer and their notes | Repeatable lighting, camera position, and angles |
| Background removal | Manual, in editing software | Automatic (IQ Mask) |
| 360° spins | Slow to shoot and assemble | Captured and assembled in one pass |
| Publishing | Export and upload by hand | Batch export to your store |
| Best for | Low volume and one-off hero shots | Growing catalogs with a fixed image standard |
A shooting table is a good starting point, and light diffusers make it better. But every product still needs manual arranging and editing. An automated studio costs more up front, and it pays back in production time: templates, guided workflows, and direct publishing to your e-commerce platform. If you're weighing the options, our buyer's guide to product photography systems lists what to check before you buy.
The steps above work in any studio. At scale, the difference is how much of the repetition you do by hand - and whether capture, processing, and publishing run as one end-to-end workflow or as separate jobs.
Alphastudio Compact handles medium-sized products up to 80 × 70 × 130 cm and 100 kg - sporting goods, musical instruments, suitcases, small home appliances, tools - with capture, processing, and publishing in one workflow:
Shooting smaller products - cosmetics, packaged food, jewelry, spare parts? The Alphashot range brings the same template-based workflow to tabletop scale.
See Alphastudio Compact → · Book a free demo →
A packshot is a photo of a product on its own, often with its packaging and label, usually on a plain white background. It shows the buyer exactly what they're getting, with no props, models, or scene.
A packshot isolates the product to inform the buyer about its shape, color, and details. A lifestyle photo shows the product in use or in a real setting to inspire the buyer. Most product pages use a packshot as the main image and lifestyle shots as secondary images.
White (RGB 255, 255, 255) for main images on marketplaces and retailer sites - it's the default in the GS1 image standard. Transparent backgrounds work for images placed on banners or in catalogs, and plain colors work for brand and social content.
A good starting point is ISO 100, an aperture of f/8-f/11, a tripod, manual or locked focus, and a fixed white balance matched to your lights (around 5500 K). Shoot RAW and save your settings per product type.
Move your lights to the side so reflections fall away from the camera, use black cards to define the edges, and choose long, narrow softboxes for clean strip reflections. Fix glare at capture first and keep retouching for what's left.
Shoot large and export per channel. The GS1 standard recommends 900 × 900 to 2,400 × 2,400 px for web primary images, Google Merchant Center recommends 1,500 × 1,500 px or more, Amazon needs 1,000 px or more on the longest side for zoom, and eBay requires at least 500 px on the longest side.
Yes. Automated studios control the camera, lights, and turntable from software, apply saved templates, remove backgrounds, and publish images to your store in batches. Orbitvu's Alphastudio Compact, for example, can shoot 150 medium-sized products a day.
Use the form to tell us what you are planning and what kind of product content workflow you need.
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