On white
- packshot
- white background shot
- cut-out shot
The product alone on pure white, lit so its own edges still read.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
This is the shot the marketplaces demand. Amazon, eBay and Google Merchant Center all want the first image of a listing on plain white, so the product can sit in a grid beside a thousand others without any of them fighting.
It also travels. A product on white drops into an email, a slide, a print sheet or a dark web page with one cut-out, and nothing in the frame dates it.
How it works
Light the product and the background separately. One large soft source at the front left and a white fill card at the right give the shape, and two more lights on the sweep behind take the background to pure white.
Put the camera at the height of the middle of the product and keep it square. A lens above the middle tips the product forward and the label bends.
Give it a contact shadow or no shadow at all. A faint soft patch directly under the base sets the product on the ground. Anything longer than the base itself reads as a mistake.
Guard the edge. Flag the background lights so they do not spill onto the front of the product, and hold the outer edge one shade darker than the white behind it.
When to use it
Use it for any listing, any price sheet, any comparison grid, and any image that another designer will cut out and reuse.
Leave it alone when the product has to look expensive. White says catalogue. A dark ground and a hard light say shop window.
Told apart from its neighbours
Cinema publishes High Key and Clean Frame. High key is a whole scene lit bright with soft shadows, and a clean frame is a shot with no actor in it. On white is neither: it is one object, one white ground, and a fixed brief from a marketplace.
Floating product also uses a plain ground, but it lifts the object off it. On white keeps the base on the surface and proves it with the contact shadow.
Where it is used
Amazon has required the main image of a listing on a pure white background, RGB 255 255 255, with the product filling most of the frame, since its image standards were published. Google Merchant Center rejects a product feed image with a watermark or promotional text over it, so the plain packshot is the only one that passes everywhere. IKEA has run cut-out products on white through its printed catalogue since the 1950s, and moved the same frames onto the website without reshooting them.
- Amazon listing images
- Google Shopping results
- IKEA catalogue cut-outs
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own subject, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<product> on a pure white background at 255, studio packshot, one large soft light from the front left and a white fill card opposite, camera at the height of the middle of the product, a faint soft contact shadow directly under it, the product centred with an even margin on all four sides, the outer edge of the product held one shade darker than the background
What goes wrong
The white edge vanishes. A white kettle on a white ground loses its left side, and the handle floats. Say the outer edge stays one shade darker than the background, and add a dark card at the side to draw a line down it.
The background comes back light grey rather than white. Say pure white at 255, and say the background is lit separately from the product.
Leave out
grey gradient, dark vignette, hard cast shadow, studio reflections, props, cropped edges
Watch for
The trap is a blown edge. If the background light spills forward, a white or light edge on the product disappears into the white and the shape breaks.
Questions
Shoot it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
