How to take good product photos with your phone

You do not need a camera, a studio or a light kit. A phone from the last few years, a window and a sheet of white paper are enough to take product photos that look clean on Instagram, on your Google profile and on your website. What separates a snapshot from a good product photo is mostly light, background and a steady phone, and all three are free. Here is the setup, the settings, the shots to take and the mistakes that give a quick photo away.

First, wipe the lens

A phone lives in a pocket, so the lens is almost always smudged. Google's own troubleshooting page for Pixel phones starts there: take off any case that might block the lens, and wipe the back glass gently with a soft, clean cloth. A hazy photo with a soft glow around bright spots is usually a fingerprint, not a bad camera. It takes five seconds and fixes more photos than any setting.

Set up one corner that works every time

• A window, not a lamp. Daylight from the side shows true colors and texture. Turn off the ceiling lights, so two colors of light do not mix on the product.
• Soft light. Direct sun makes hard shadows and glare. If the sun is shining straight in, hang a white sheet or baking paper over the glass, or wait for a cloudy hour.
• A plain background. Bend a sheet of white poster board from the table up against the wall. The curve hides the line where table meets wall, so the product seems to float. Kraft paper, a wooden board or a slate tile work too, as long as they do not compete with what you sell.
• A white card on the dark side. A piece of white foam board opposite the window bounces light back into the shadows.
• Something to keep the phone still. A stack of books, a small tripod, or your elbows on the table.

Once the corner works, mark the spots with tape. The same light and the same background every time is what makes twenty photos look like one shop.

Five camera settings worth knowing

The steps below are from Apple's iPhone User Guide for iOS 26. Most Android camera apps have the same tools under slightly different names, usually in the camera's own settings.

1. Grid and level. Open the Settings app, tap Camera, and turn on Grid and Level. Use the lines to keep the edge of the table straight and the product in the middle.
2. Focus and brightness. Tap the product on the screen to focus on it. Next to the focus box, drag up or down to make the picture brighter or darker.
3. Lock them. Touch and hold the focus box until you see AE/AF Lock. Focus and brightness now stay put for the next shots, so a whole series of products comes out the same. Tap the screen to unlock.
4. Flash off. Tap or swipe up from the camera modes at the bottom of the screen, tap Flash, and switch it to Off. On glass, metal or anything glossy, flash leaves a white blob in the middle of the product.
5. Timer. In the same menu, tap Timer and pick 3, 5 or 10 seconds. Apple offers it so you can get into the shot. For product photos it does something else: your finger is off the phone when the picture is taken, so it does not shake.

One more choice: the iPhone camera shoots in 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9. Shoot in 4:3 and leave some space around the product. Then the same photo can be cropped square for the feed or tall for a story without cutting off an edge.

Six shots to take of every product

Say you make candles. One candle on your table can give you six different photos, and each one answers a different question a customer has:

The clean shot is the one for your website and your shop listing. The other five are your posts. Each needs a short caption and gives you a week of reasons to show up in people's feeds. If you are just starting out, How to use social media for a small business: a simple plan covers what to do with them.

What Google asks of your photos

Any photo from a recent phone is far bigger than what Google needs. What gets photos into trouble is editing, not size.

• Google Business Profile. Photos should be JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, ideally 720 by 720 pixels and at least 250 by 250. Google adds that a photo "should be in focus and well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters. In other words, the image should represent reality."
• Google Merchant Center, if you list products for Google Shopping. Google recommends images near or above 1500 by 1500 pixels, a product that fills no less than 75% and no more than 90% of the image, and a solid white or transparent background. The main image may not carry promotional text such as prices or "free shipping", watermarks, logos laid over the photo, or a border.

Those Merchant Center rules make a good habit everywhere. Keep the photo clean, and put the price and the sale in the caption.

Edit lightly, the same way every time

• Straighten and crop in your phone's Photos app. On an iPhone the editing tools also fix leaning vertical lines.
• Brighten a little if the white background looks gray.
• Check that white looks white. If the photo looks yellow or blue, use the warmth slider.
• Skip strong filters. The color on the screen has to be the color in the box, or the first message you get is a return.
• Use the same adjustments on every photo in a series, so they sit well side by side on your profile.

Quick fixes for common problems

Your part and ours

Good photos come from the person who is next to the product every day, and that is you. Everything after the photo is desk work: choosing the best ones, cropping them for each network, making graphics in your colors, writing captions and posting on schedule. That is what we do. You take photos on your phone and upload them, and we turn them into finished posts that you approve before they go out. On Growth and Daily you also get a monthly shot list, so you know what to photograph next. See the plans.