How to crop a product image for an e-commerce site?

In e-commerce, it’s primarily the images that sell before the actual products. In this case, these images need to be of impeccable quality in order to optimize the sale. But how do you do that, you ask? The retouch or detour. The aim here is to make the photo of the product in question more obvious, so as to catch the eye of customers. For you online sellers wanting to have attractive product images, find out in this article how to crop a product image for an e-commerce site. We’ll explain the whole process. Let’s get started!

Why crop a product image for an e-commerce site?

Clipping a product image for an e-commerce site is essential to improve the presentation and visual appeal of your products online.

Improving visibility and presentation

By cropping an image, you eliminate the unwanted background that could distract potential customers. This enhances the product itself, making it more visible and attractive at first glance.

Consistency and professionalism

Precise clipping gives your e-commerce site a polished, professional appearance. Clipped images offer visual consistency, enhancing your brand’s credibility and inspiring confidence among online shoppers.

Adaptability to different contexts

Cropped images can be easily integrated into various backgrounds or settings, depending on marketing needs. This allows you to create visuals that match your brand identity or are tailored to specific campaigns.

Enhance product details

By eliminating distractions around the product, clipping allows customers to focus on the essential details and features. This can influence their purchasing decision by providing a clear, detailed view of the product.

How to crop a product image for an e-commerce site?

In this short tutorial, we guide you through Photoshop.

Choosing the right image

To achieve the best rendering, it’s important that the image be of the highest resolution possible and have optimal contrast between subject and background. Only under these conditions can the work be done faster and cleaner. So it’s crucial to work from a better quality image.

Select subject

To proceed with topic selection, you must first click Select, which can be found in the menu. Next, click the Subject button. In this way, Photoshop automatically identifies the subject to be cropped. Afterwards, you’ll see a selection of a few subjects.

In most cases, the basic selection made by Photoshop is already accurate. Yet not all edges are often optimally identified. In this case, you can

Use edge detection

On this operation, you need to click again on the Select command, then Select and hide. After that, you’ll see a window on the right with a bar featuring new tools. On this window, you must first adjust the view to Overlay to distinguish the parts that are automatically selected. You then delete or separate everything in red.

For the next step, you’re going to optimize the selection by means of the tools in the bar on the left. These include the quick selection tool and the contour enhancement tool. First use the quick selection to make basic selections. With this tool, you can tint in the manner of a classic brush, so that Photoshop better detects the contours to be cropped.

Use the automatically supplied layer mask

In the Adjustment parameters drop-down menu, you activate the Decontaminate outline colors item. This setting thins the selection. Simultaneously, editing of the settings made automatically changes to New layer with mask. This is the best setting to avoid losing information should you wish to make further changes later. By pressing the OK key, you confirm everything.

Set a plain background

To ensure that the clipping is successful, i.e. that there are no remnants of the old background, it’s best to put a colored background in the background.

Which tools to use to crop a product image for an e-commerce site?

To crop a product image for an e-commerce site, several effective tools are available. Adobe Photoshop remains one of the most popular choices, offering advanced features such as the Pen tool for precise selections and layer masking to adjust complex details. For those looking for alternatives, online platforms such as Canva and specialized software such as GIMP also provide easy-to-use clipping tools, ideal for those just starting out or who need a quick and efficient solution to optimize their product images for the web.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you’re an e-commerce operator, whatever product you’re offering for sale, try to offer better quality merchandise in your online storefront. In other words, use better product images in your e-commerce site. Besides, you already know by now how to hijack a product image for an e-commerce site. However, if you want your product image clipping to be carried out by an expert, I’d advise you to consult a freelance graphic design platform such as BeFreelancr or Designhill.