Photography is the single biggest variable in catalog quality. Two catalogs can have identical layouts, identical typography, and identical design quality — but if one has consistently lit, high-resolution product photography and the other has a mix of dark phone shots, borrowed stock images, and inconsistent backgrounds, they will look like they were produced by different businesses operating in entirely different leagues.
No designer can fully compensate for poor photography. What they can do is work with what you give them — and the better what you give them, the better the result. Here's exactly how to prepare your imagery before anything goes to layout.
Resolution Requirements: The Numbers That Matter
For a print catalog, every image needs to be a minimum of 300 DPI at the size it will be placed on the page. In practical terms, this means a product image that will be placed at 10cm × 10cm needs to be at least 1,181 × 1,181 pixels. A full-page image (roughly 20cm × 27cm on A4) needs to be at least 2,362 × 3,189 pixels.
Most professional digital cameras and many modern smartphones produce images well above this threshold at full resolution. The problems arise when images are scaled up beyond their native resolution, or when compressed versions (downloaded from websites, exported from social media, taken as screenshots) are submitted for print use. If you're sourcing images from your own archive, always provide the original, uncompressed file from the camera — not a version that's been exported, resized, or shared via messaging apps, which typically compress images significantly.
For digital-only catalogs, the threshold is lower — images at 150 DPI work well on screen — but submitting high-resolution originals is still best practice, as it gives the designer full control over sizing and compression during export.
White Background vs. Lifestyle Photography
These two photography styles serve different purposes in a catalog, and the choice between them (or the combination of them) should be deliberate.
White background photography — the product isolated on a pure white or very light neutral background — is the standard for product catalogs, price lists, and wholesale documents. It allows maximum focus on the product itself, ensures consistency across all items in the catalog, and reproduces cleanly in print. It's also the easiest style for designers to work with, as the background is consistent and images can be easily placed on any page colour without clashing.
Lifestyle photography — the product shown in context, being used, worn, or styled in an aspirational setting — is the foundation of lookbooks and fashion catalogs. It creates emotional connection and communicates how the product fits into a life or aesthetic. It requires more planning, more resources, and more creative direction to produce well.
Many catalogs use both. Lifestyle imagery works well on opening spreads, category dividers, and cover pages. White-background or consistent-styled product shots work on the detail pages where buyers are comparing specs and making decisions. If you're briefing a photographer, be explicit about which type you need for which purpose — and ensure both sessions use consistent lighting temperature so the images feel cohesive when placed together.
Consistency of Lighting and Angles
Consistency is the element most often sacrificed when product photography is gathered over time from multiple sources. A catalog assembled from images shot in three different studios, by two different photographers, in different seasons, with different lighting setups, will look incoherent — regardless of how good each individual image is.
If you're briefing a new product photography shoot, provide the photographer with your existing product images as a reference standard and ask them to match: the direction of light, the background tone, the camera angle relative to the product, and the size of the product within the frame. For a product range with many items, it's worth completing a test shot of one product and confirming it against your reference before shooting the full range.
For the catalog specifically, ensure that products within the same category are photographed at the same angle and scale. A furniture catalog where sofas are shown from the front, then from a three-quarter angle, then from directly above, looks like three different catalogs spliced together.
What to Do with Mixed-Quality Photography
Most businesses don't have a pristine, consistent set of product images ready to go. You have some professional shots, some decent phone photos, some images borrowed from a supplier's press pack, and a few that are frankly unusable. This is normal — and manageable, if you approach it honestly.
Before submitting images to a designer, do a self-assessment: rate each image as usable, borderline, or unusable. A good designer can often rescue borderline images with colour correction, background cleanup, and cropping — but this takes time and should be factored into the project scope and timeline. Unusable images can sometimes be replaced with stylised illustrations or clean product renders, which some manufacturers provide. Discuss your image inventory honestly at the briefing stage rather than submitting everything and hoping for the best.
File Formats: JPEG, PNG, and When Each Is Right
Submit your images in the highest quality format available from the source:
- JPEG (.jpg): The standard format for photography. Submit at maximum quality (lowest compression setting). A JPEG that's been resaved multiple times degrades with each save — always provide the original file if possible.
- PNG (.png): Best when the image has a transparent background (a product isolated with no background). PNG preserves transparency cleanly; JPEG does not support transparency and will fill the transparent area with white. If your manufacturer provides cut-out product images, request PNG format.
- TIFF (.tif): Uncompressed format, produces very large files but retains maximum quality. Accepted by all professional design software. Use if available.
- RAW camera files: If you're submitting images directly from a camera, RAW files (CR2, NEF, ARW depending on camera brand) contain the maximum data. Designers and retouchers can often do more with RAW files than with processed JPEGs.
Avoid submitting images extracted from PDFs, taken from websites (these are almost always low resolution), or screenshotted from social media.
Folder Organisation Before You Send
Disorganised image submissions are one of the most common and avoidable sources of delay in catalog projects. A designer who receives 200 images in a single unlabelled folder, with filenames like "IMG_4521.jpg", "final_FINAL.jpg", and "sofa blue USE THIS ONE.jpg", will spend hours just mapping images to products — time that adds to your bill and your timeline.
Organise your images before submission:
- Create a folder per product category
- Within each folder, create a subfolder per product with a consistent naming convention that matches your SKU or product name
- Label images to indicate variant (e.g., "sofa-oslo_blue.jpg", "sofa-oslo_grey.jpg")
- If you have both hero images and additional detail shots, label them clearly ("hero", "detail-1", "detail-2")
- Include a spreadsheet that maps each image filename to its corresponding product entry in your data
This sounds laborious but typically takes 1–2 hours for a 100-product range and saves the equivalent time in designer queries and revision rounds.
Quick Wins Without a Professional Photographer
If you can't commission a professional product shoot, these approaches consistently improve image quality at minimal cost: shoot in natural daylight near a large north-facing window (avoiding direct sun, which creates harsh shadows), use a large sheet of white card or white fabric as a background, shoot at your phone's maximum resolution with the camera stabilised on a small tripod, and photograph every product at the same angle in the same light in the same session.
Post-processing in an app like Lightroom Mobile (free) can correct exposure, white balance, and background brightness significantly. A consistent, well-lit phone photo is dramatically better material for a designer than an inconsistent professional shot with a complicated background.
Our design process includes a basic image review before layout begins — we'll flag any images that are likely to cause quality issues in print, so there are no surprises. To discuss your project and image inventory, get in touch.