What do you need from me to start?
Ideally the product’s CAD file — STEP, IGES, SLDPRT or similar: with that, the part is exact from the very first minute. If you don’t have it, a dimensioned drawing works. And if you don’t have that either, photos of the product from every side plus the main dimensions will do.
If you have neither an accurate drawing nor usable images, I need the physical product. You send it, I measure it, model it and send it back. That step can’t be skipped: for the image to be your product and not something that looks like it, someone has to measure it.
How do you charge: per image or per hour?
By the batch, with a fixed quote agreed before we start. I don’t do one-off images: the pilot is 25 images (one model in 5 variants) for €250, and in full catalogues the price per image comes down to €5, because the cost is in preparing the part, and that is done only once. Prices exclude VAT. You know what you’ll pay and how many images you’ll get.
What moves the price is the number of products, how many finishes each one has, how many views you need and whether there are lifestyle scenes. The higher the volume, the less each image costs, because the big job is preparing the first one.
How long does it take?
The first test image, within 48 hours. After that, the lead time depends on the size of the catalogue, and we agree it in writing in the quote, together with the price.
To give you an idea: once a product is set up, producing its 18 finishes doesn’t take 18 times as long. That’s the whole difference with a photo shoot.
What if the finish doesn’t look like mine?
Before running the whole catalogue I send you one image to approve. Adjustments to finish, lighting and framing on that first image are included: we keep refining it until the aged brass is your aged brass.
Only when you sign it off does the rest go into production. That way, what gets redone is one image, not three hundred.
Who owns the images?
You do, for any use and with no time limit: website, printed catalogue, marketplaces, trade fairs, social media and advertising. No per-use or per-year licences.
If you’d also like to keep the 3D model of the product for later use, it can be delivered; tell me and we’ll include it in the quote.
How do you handle confidentiality?
I’m happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and it’s standard when the product isn’t on the market yet.
Nothing you send me appears on my website or social media until you say yes, or until you have published the product yourself.
What format do I receive them in?
However you need them: JPG for web and marketplaces, PNG with a transparent background for layouts and catalogues, and print-resolution TIFF if you are going to print.
With the files named by product and finish, following your own naming convention, so uploading them to your website isn’t another job.
What is the difference between a product render and product photography?
A photo shoot needs the product manufactured in every finish, taken to the studio and shot again for each variant. With a product render, the product is built once in 3D with its real dimensions and materials, and every finish, colour or view comes out of that same model with the same light and the same framing.
For a product with two or three finishes, photography pays off. From four or five finishes per product, or if some finishes haven’t been manufactured yet, rendering is cheaper and more consistent. Here are three catalogues made this way.
Do you also do video?
Yes. Assembly and exploded-view animations: how the part is installed, how the assembly fits together or how it opens. They are made on the same product that is already set up, so they cost far less than starting from scratch.
Also 360° spins for the product page.
