Managing Photography and Inventory on a Budget

[Ansuha]

Hi everyone,

I'm running a new store on Shopify and recently hired two team members, one for product photography and another for inventory management. Due to budget constraints, I'm looking to streamline operations and have one person handle both aspects.

My question is regarding product photos. Can I ethically use images from the original supplier's website? If not, are there any free solutions to enhance existing photos while staying on a tight budget?

A friend suggested a background removal app download from Modyedge , and I'd love to hear from the community about any reliable free apps that can help with background removal and image quality improvement.

Thank you for your advice!

[Dirk · Accepted solution]

Hey, @Ansuha 

Great question. Typically the suppliers will allow you to use their product images. You can always contact them directly to confirm this. With that said, doing your own product photography will always add a personal branded touch to your online store, and it can go a long way from seperating yourself from another dropshipping business.

There are a variety of background removal tools, Shopify has a built-in feature that enables you to enhance your product images directly within the Shopify platform.

For more detailed information on how to use the Shopify Image Editor and its capabilities, you can refer to the Shopify Help Center article: Using the image editor. This resource will guide you through the process of editing and optimizing your product images to create a visually appealing online store.

If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

[Ansuha]

Thanks so much! This is exactly what I needed. It's really helpful to know that I can use the built-in Shopify editor to remove backgrounds and edit my product images. I'll definitely check out the Shopify Help Center article for a step-by-step guide.

I appreciate you mentioning the benefits of using my own product photography too. I hadn't thought about it from a branding perspective, but that makes a lot of sense. I'll keep that in mind as I move forward. Is there anything else I should consider when it comes to using product images?

[Dirk]

Anytime! If you do go the route of doing your own product photography, our guide on phone product photography is a great place to start. - Dirk

[snapshot]

Most suppliers will allow you to use their photos on your own store, that should not be a problem. However there is another issue with using supplier product photography that I see time and time again with new Shopify stores:

• If you have multiple different suppliers then your photography style can look inconsistent
• Suppliers will often add graphics and text to their product photos which isn't a good look for most western markets
• Consumers have gotten wise to dropshipping - either of these things above could indicate your just another store importing things from China and harm the branding of your store

So supplier photography is cheap but lower quality, and in-house photography is higher quality but expensive.

I'm the developer of a Shopify app called Snapshot which allows you to get the best of both worlds here using AI. I've had merchants use my app and tell me that it's saved them literally thousands of dollars on product photography fees.

You upload a photo of the product (either taken with a regular smartphone, or taken from your supplier). It will automatically delete the background, leaving the product as-is. You can then choose how you want your new images to look - snapshot provides a bunch of pre-made themes or you can create your own just by describing what you want, for example "photo of product on a marble slab, cherry blossom in the background".

Snapshot also comes with a bunch of useful features such as bulk editing so you can process multiple images at once.

Shopify does offer some functionality like this natively but I believe there are only 7 pre-made themes and the generates are not very high quality. Plus no bulk editing or other useful features.

Happy to answer any questions you have about this process.

Hope this helps!

Tim