The editorial look
Editorial is a product photograph that behaves like a magazine page
Strong colour, deliberate composition and a great deal of empty space. It sells a point of view rather than a specification.
Sized and staged for Instagram · Shopify
Editorial photography borrows its rules from print. The object is placed rather than centred, the colour is a decision rather than a background, and the empty space is doing as much work as the subject — because on a magazine page the space is where the type went.
That inheritance is why it looks expensive. It reads as art-directed, and art direction is the thing a small shop is most often assumed not to have.
It is also the most useful look for a brand that sells more than one thing, because it gives a range a point of view. Six products photographed editorially against one colour say "we chose this"; six products on white say "we have six products".
Why your photos are costing you sales
The failure is emptiness without intention. Space in an editorial photograph is composed — it has a shape and the object relates to it. Space that is just the object being small in a big frame is not editorial, it is badly cropped, and the difference is obvious even to somebody who could not name it.
The other failure is using it where the buyer needs information. An editorial image is a poor first listing photograph: somebody scanning a results page wants the product, at size, in the middle, and giving them a mood instead loses the click.
The scenes that suit your work
A handful chosen for what you sell, out of the full library.
It has to still be your item
Use it where the space has a job. The shop hero is built for it: the object sits off-centre and the empty half is where the headline goes, which is composition with a purpose rather than composition for its own sake.
Pick one colour and keep it across the range. A gradient in a different tone for every product is not a point of view, it is an absence of one — and the whole reason this look works is that it looks decided.
- A range that reads as a decision rather than an inventory
- Space with a job, which is where your headline goes
- Art direction on a shop that cannot afford an art director
- One colour across six products, which is what makes it a brand
Three steps, about a minute
01
Upload your photos
Two or three angles on a phone is plenty. We cut the background automatically.
02
Pick your scenes
Tick as many as you like from 56 staged settings, or describe your own.
03
Get your shots
They arrive together in your gallery, ready to download for a listing or a post.
Questions people ask before they sign up
- Can I use this on a marketplace?
- As a second or third image. The first usually has to be white with nothing else in the frame, and an editorial crop will fail that rule.
- How do I pick the colour?
- Pick one that is not in your product, and keep it. A background that matches the object flattens both of them.
- Does it work for a single product?
- It works, but it earns most across a range — a point of view needs more than one photograph to be visible as one.
Also sells like you
Editorial is a product photograph that behaves like a magazine page
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