How much does product photography cost?

If you're pricing out product photography for an Etsy, Shopify, or Amazon shop, the honest answer is "it depends a lot on the route you take." Here's what professional shoots, DIY setups, and ShopShot's real packages actually cost, so you can compare with real numbers instead of guesswork.

Professional product photography cost: day rates and per-image pricing

Hiring a freelance or studio photographer usually works one of two ways: a day rate for the whole shoot, or a per-image rate for finished photos. Day rates for a commercial or product shoot commonly run from around $500 to $3,000, depending on the photographer's experience, your market, and whether the rate includes a studio, lighting, and an assistant. Per-image pricing for finished product photos commonly runs from around $50 to $350 each, with simple shots on a plain background toward the lower end and styled or lifestyle shots with props or models toward the higher end.

Some newer platform studios sell individual product photos as a flat per-photo rate instead of a day rate, often in the $30 to $75 range per photo, sometimes with an additional studio or membership fee on top. Rates vary by photographer, market, and product type, so treat these as a general range rather than a quote.

DIY: what a basic setup costs

If you'd rather shoot your own photos, a basic lightbox setup is inexpensive: simple DIY materials (a cardboard box, white paper, and a lamp) can cost as little as $10 to $30, and a pre-made light box or tent typically runs somewhere between $20 and a few hundred dollars depending on size and quality. What a DIY setup doesn't include is your time: shooting, editing, and retouching every listing photo yourself, for every new product.

ShopShot Studio's real prices

ShopShot Studio works differently from both of those routes: you send one photo of your real product, and we generate new studio-style photos (and video, on two of the packages) from it. A person checks every generated image against your original photo before delivery, and you get one free redo if something doesn't match. Everything is delivered by email within 1 business day, starting at $25. Here's the full pricing:

Which fits your shop

A traditional shoot makes sense when you need a photographer physically handling and styling your product, at a scale that justifies a day rate. A DIY lightbox is a reasonable choice if you're comfortable shooting and editing every image yourself. If you'd rather send one photo of a product you already have and get back a checked set of studio-style images without owning any gear, that's what ShopShot is built for.

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