What product photography costs, and what drives it

The short answer

A finished product image from a shoot typically runs $150 to $5,000. The low end is a simple product on a plain background; the high end is a styled room with a set, props and a crew.

The more useful question is what it costs per finish you sell, because that is the number that grows with your catalog.

Where the money goes

A lifestyle shoot is several costs stacked on top of each other. Most of them are fixed per day, so the price per image depends on how many images the day produces.

• The photographer's day rate, and usually an assistant.
• A stylist, and the props they bring or buy.
• The set or location: a studio build, a rented home, or a showroom closed for the day.
• Getting product there and back: freight, handling and anything damaged on the way.
• Retouching after the shoot, priced per image.
• Your own team's time to plan, travel and approve.

Why per finish is the number to watch

A sofa sold in twenty fabrics is twenty products to a buyer. A shoot usually covers one or two of them, because every extra fabric means reupholstering or shipping another sample. The rest go online with a swatch and no picture of the sofa in that fabric.

So multiply: products, times the finishes each one comes in, times the images you want of each. That is the size of the job if you wanted every finish shown the way your best seller is.

When a shoot is still the right call

Campaign hero images, anything with people in it, and a look your creative team wants to direct in person are worth a shoot. Real materials under real light are hard to beat for the handful of images that lead a season.

Where the maths stops working is the long tail: every other finish, every new colorway after the shoot, every dealer who wants a different room.

Work out your own number

Put in your product count, finishes per product and what a photograph costs you today, and compare it with rendering the same images. The estimate is a link you can send to whoever signs off the budget.