Photographing tubs, pouches and sachets

Supplement brands rarely sell one format. A powder might exist as a tub, a refill pouch and a box of single-serve sachets, and each of those photographs differently enough that a single setup will serve one well and the others badly.

Rigid tubs are the easy case

A tub is a regular cylinder with a flat label area and a lid. It holds its shape, sits square, and photographs like any other rigid container.

The two things to get right are label rotation — square to the camera, checked on screen — and the lid, which is usually glossy even when the body is matte and will produce a hotspot under direct light. Move the light off-axis and the hotspot moves off the top.

Photograph tubs closed for the main image. An open tub with a scoop is a useful secondary image but reads as used rather than new.

Pouches must be filled to photograph well

A stand-up pouch is a flexible bag that depends entirely on its contents for shape. Empty or half-full, it slumps, creases along the gusset and reads as a deflated crisp packet.

Fill it. If you are photographing before production, fill a sample with anything of the right weight and density — flour, rice, sand. The difference between a filled and an unfilled pouch is the difference between a product and a wrapper.

Stand it on a level surface, square the gusset so the base is symmetrical, and smooth the front panel with a hand before shooting. Pouch creases are natural and expected; twisted gussets look like a mistake.

Sachets need to be shown as a set

A single sachet is a small flat rectangle and photographs as one. It communicates nothing about quantity, which is the thing a buyer of single-serve product is assessing.

Photograph the box and a few loose sachets together, fanned or stacked, so the buyer can see both the retail unit and what is inside it. A count in the description is not enough; the visual matters.

Sachets are usually foil or metallised film, which is highly reflective. Treat them like glossy packaging: light off-axis, and use card either side to control what the surface reflects.

Blister packs are mostly a reflection problem

Clear blister plastic reflects everything and the foil backing reflects the rest. Photographed flat under a ceiling light, a blister pack is a collection of bright shapes with the tablets barely visible.

Shoot at a slight angle so the plastic reflects something dark and controlled rather than the room, and light from the side so the tablets inside are defined by shadow rather than washed out.

Show scale for anything sold by count

A tub of two hundred capsules and a tub of sixty look identical in a photograph if you crop them the same way.

This is a genuine source of returns. Include one image with a scale reference, or photograph your range together so relative sizes are visible. Buyers assume larger than reality more often than smaller.

Keep the format consistent across the range

If you sell the same formula in three formats, photograph all three the same way, on the same surface, at the same angle, so the range reads as a range rather than as three unrelated products.

This is the same consistency argument that applies everywhere, and it is more acute here because the formats genuinely look different and inconsistent photography compounds that.

What staging handles

The container, its shape as filled, and all printed text are preserved from your photograph — including the fact that your pouch has natural creases. Staging supplies the surface and the light.

What it cannot do is fill an empty pouch or straighten a twisted gusset. Fill it, square it and wipe it before you photograph; that preparation is the part that decides the result.