Listing and catalogue sets for beauty, skincare and lifestyle brands, shot in our Mumbai studio. Pure white where the marketplace wants it, true to the shade, and identical from the first SKU to the last.
Nobody frames a listing image and hangs it in reception. It gets seen at the size of a postage stamp, on a phone, wedged between two competitors, by someone who will decide in less time than it took to read this sentence. That is the brief for e-commerce product photography, and it is the one we shoot to in our Mumbai studio for beauty, skincare, cosmetics and lifestyle brands: listing and catalogue sets for your own Shopify store and for Amazon India, Nykaa, Flipkart and Myntra.
A listing set is a different job from a campaign still, and it helps to know which one you are buying. A campaign still is one product, one surface, one idea and a lot of light, which is why three to five SKUs fill a full day. A listing set is the opposite discipline: the same white, the same angle, the same light and the same retouching across every SKU in the range, so a customer scrolling your catalogue sees one brand and not forty separate afternoons. For the launch hero and the billboard, see our page on campaign and hero stills. This page is about the images that keep selling after the launch post has scrolled away.
Done well, it looks like nothing happened. That is the point. We have argued before that good lighting is supposed to look boring, and a listing image is where that rule is strictest. If a shopper notices the light on your moisturiser, they are not noticing the moisturiser.
A phone case on white is a solved problem. Beauty packs are not, for four reasons that turn up on almost every SKU list.
Gloss and pearl are mirrors. A glossy lip tube is a small curved mirror, and it will happily show your customer the entire studio. Pearlescent and duochrome finishes change colour as the angle changes. The fix is big diffusion and black cards that give the pack clean, deliberate edges instead of a white smear, and we test it before the day, not on it.
Clear bottles disappear on white. A transparent toner bottle on a pure white background has almost nothing separating it from the page. The edges have to be drawn with dark cards just out of frame, so the glass reads as glass, the liquid reads as full, and the product still sits on the white the marketplace asks for. Cutting a clear bottle out in post and hoping is how listings end up looking pasted on.
Shade is the product. For a lipstick, a foundation or a kajal, the colour on screen is the purchase decision. A shade that reads brick on the listing and arrives rust is a return, usually followed by a one star review with a photo attached. So every setup starts with a colour reference in frame, files are checked against the physical product on set, and each shade is corrected on its own in retouching.
The label has to survive the zoom. Customers zoom in to read the ingredients, the SPF and the 30 ml. Amazon's zoom only works on images with 1,000 pixels or more on the longest side, and small type on a curved tube goes soft quickly. We shoot for sharpness across the whole label, keep foil and embossed type legible, and deliver at sizes where the zoom has something to show.
Then there is the range itself. Hundreds of SKUs only look like one brand if the camera height, lens, distance and light are locked and marked on the floor before the first frame, and nobody quietly improves them at SKU ninety. The same thinking should carry into your campaign: the same white balance and the same retouching restraint on the listing set and the campaign stills, so a customer moving from an ad to a listing to your website never feels the join.
Whether the shoot happens in Mumbai or anywhere else in India, Amazon product photography is shot to one rulebook: the product image guide on Amazon Seller Central India. These are the rules that decide how a set is lit and framed (as of September 2026, check the current guidelines before you brief, because they do change).
Two of these catch beauty brands out. Pure white means 255, not the pale grey a white sweep falls off to behind a tall bottle, so we light the background separately and check the values in the file rather than trusting our eyes. And the 85 percent rule means your 15 ml eye cream and your 200 ml body lotion fill exactly the same square, which is why the in-hand scale shot deserves its slot in the gallery.
Flipkart, Nykaa and Myntra each give sellers their own image rules, and we would rather work from the current sheet than from someone's blog summary of it. Send us the spec sheet from your seller panel and we build the crops, sizes and backgrounds to it. For your own store, Shopify's product media guidance suggests 2048 x 2048 pixels for square product images and one consistent aspect ratio across your main images, which is our consistency argument again, this time from the platform.
A catalogue shoot in Mumbai for a beauty brand is mostly organisation, with photography in the middle. Five steps, in this order.
We do not publish a photography rate card. E-commerce work is quoted from your SKU list and the deliverables, because two briefs that both say "fifty products" can be very different days. These are the things that move the number.
For market ranges, and why a per image price is really a day rate in disguise, read our full breakdown of product photography costs in India. Then send us the list, and we will price your version of it.
It depends on the SKU count, the angles per SKU, the pack types and how deep the retouching goes, so we quote from your SKU list rather than a rate card. Send the list with the platforms and the deadline and you will have a costed quote within 48 hours. For market ranges across India, our product photography cost guide lays them out.
It depends on the angles per SKU and how many different pack types are on the list, not on how fast anyone presses the shutter. A range that shares one pack shape and one lighting setup moves quickly; a mixed list of glass, gloss and cartons needs a relight for each family. We schedule from your SKU sheet and tell you the number of days up front, rather than promising a round number and discovering the clear bottles at 4pm.
Yes. Main images are shot on a background lit to pure white (RGB 255, 255, 255), with the whole product filling 85 percent of the frame and nothing in shot that does not come in the box, which is what Amazon's product image guide asks for as of September 2026. We check the white value in the file before delivery, and the gallery images follow Amazon's rules for additional images.
We match to the physical product, shade by shade, which is as exact as photography gets. Every setup starts with a colour reference in frame, files are compared with the real product on set, and each shade is corrected on its own in retouching. Pearlescent and metallic finishes change with angle, so we agree with you before the day which angle shows the true colour. What nobody can control is the brightness setting on your customer's phone.
Yes, and for beauty they are often the images that sell. Hands show scale and application; faces show how a shade sits on skin, ideally on more than one skin tone. A makeup artist is on the floor whenever skin is in frame. On Amazon these go in the additional images, because the main image stays the product alone on white.
Send them. Product work happens in our Mumbai studio, where the light, the white sweep and the camera marks stay put between SKUs. Courier the products with the SKU sheet, plus a spare of anything in glass or with a label that scuffs, and tell us where they go afterwards. If something genuinely cannot travel, we shoot on location and the travel becomes a line on the quote.
It depends on the SKU count and the retouching, and the delivery date is written into the quote, which reaches you within 48 hours of the brief. If a sale or launch date is fixed, tell us at the start: we can deliver the main images first so the listings go live while the gallery images are finished.