Maimun_Jhon
6 min readMay 14, 2019

Master Clothing Photography Without Mannequin!

To do great in photography, you have to use techniques.

Product photography is so vital for e-commerce or apparel business owners. Product photos attract viewers, and if pictures are so beautiful, they become buyers instantly.

“Photography captures detail, but photos attract buyers.

A renowned brand can spend as much as they want on product photography. But a newbie e-commerce owner can’t pay as he wishes. Notably, one who is trying to start a business online with a low budget, he cannot spend as he wants.

Therefore, one he has to choose budget photography techniques — that is the photography without mannequins or models.

Ghost mannequin is widely known for apparels photography. So, let’s start learning how to Master Clothing Photography Without Mannequin.

How to Take Pictures of Clothing?

An e-commerce site is confined only to what the viewers are viewing on the online shop. Owners have to make sure that images have the most attractive look,and make viewers ready for buying.

There are two main techniques of doing clothing photography one is Flat Lay, and another is Ghost Mannequin.

Only flat lay photography is discussed here, and how to create the ultimate beauty out of these RAW images by editing

Flat Lay Photography

The flat lay is the simplest of all apparels photography. When you just put the apparels on flat place and shot it from the above — you’ve just shot clothing by flat lay photography. It also allows flexibility in variant style, easy to setup photography area (any flat place), and can shoot more photos within a short time.

Flatlay Process

A conventional flat lay/tabletop photography setup is done with a camera facing the clothing. Whereas lights, diffusers, and delicate boxes are on the same side with the camera. Setting up the equipment, place apparels in a flat place.

To shot a product more stylishly by flat lay photography, you can use a hanger and angle it with proper light.

Flatlay Process

Conventional Flat Lay Process

A traditional flat lay — or tabletop — photography setup will incorporate a camera mounted parallel to the ground alongside lights and a determination of diffusers and delicate boxes.

Flatlay Process

Flat Lay is an easy technique to photoshoot apparels on any flat place.

Lay the item on the table and place all the devices — for example, sticks, tape and clasps — to shape the outline of the item. Usually tucking the product around the underarm and use tissue paper for a natural depth looking.

How to shot in the flat lay process:

· To capture by flat lay photography, keep your clothing clean, consider symmetry shape on the two sides of the edge and make space between each sidebar.

· In case you’re as yet uncertain, adhere to the control of thirds and place the principal parts on the guidelines of an imperceptible 3×3 framework.

· Canon EOS 5D Mk III is suitable for any professional product photography. For taking a photo, place the cloth right in the middle of the table, make it as straight as possible and place.

· At the time of cloth placed on the table make sure that neckline & shoulders are levelled one, so it levelled & looking straight.

· For different gender try to give as much as natural shape possible. Suppose cloth is lady’s cloth it might want to provide a perfect shape. If it’s a men’s one would keep it very straight, then go ahead & do correctly.

· The same thing on the other side needs to make sure which equally as much on both sides. Then it will move on to the sleeve, fly the sleep in under the body.

· To give a more natural look would also go ahead. So, it is not showing outside of the front. It just gives a nice & sharp finish.

· After all this preparation being made, you can take photos.

Short Tips:

Ø Use a little bit of tissue paper underneath the cloth. It gives more texture and raises it.

Ø It’s worth looking and playing with light on the fabric. Move the lighting just here and there to see which captures the best look.

Ø When it’s bright and no wrinkle is visible-click to shoot.

Natural look in apparels pictures

After a product photoshoot, photo editing is a must to ensure apparel images to look as it has come straight from the factory. Before post-production work by Photoshop, take a look into the new Adobe Photoshop Plugin

As flay lay is more manual and informal, there is a vast chance of wrinkles to be seen in the image. Therefore the photographs need ghost mannequin editing services.

Why ghost mannequin editing services?

Flat lay photography can be done in any flat places without any complicated studio setup. Hence, images certainly have problems with colors and lighting. Also,the flat lay photography does not capture the natural depth of images.

To introduce depth in the clothing photos, it requires to add shadows beneath apparels. In that case, photo-post editing is the only solution.

Color and lighting is a real pain in flat lay photography. For attractive apparel images, color correction is required after product photography.

Photo-post production designers make hand-drawn clipping path to do these editing smoothly.

Even if you take enough precaution color balance of clothing photography is delicate. To correct the color balance before posting images online, photo editing by Photoshop can resolve the problem. Or there are professional photo editing companies, provide natural looking apparel photos out of RAW images.

In the flat lay photography setup, there are some problems in image angle and quality. Viewers always want to see images on the same edge. Therefore, the variation in angle should be corrected to increase viewers’ attention. And neck joint editing service can provide the same angle images for all clothing images.

Finally, the problem of scratches and spot on the clothing creates a distraction and lower the photo quality. Only flat-lay photography cannot reduce these defects and scratches. But photo editing services can resolve the problem. Through post-production work flaws on clothing can fully be optimized and create the perfectly styled, edited, and attractive clothing pictures.

Apparels photo editing

Basically, ghost mannequin editing makes the apparel pictures noticing and astonishing. If you choose a flat lay, you have to do a lot more post-processing by Photoshop.

Whatever method you choose for apparel photography, whether it is with or without mannequin, you need enough experience and post-processing to make garment products more captivating.

And in terms of taking pictures without a mannequin, you require more time in post-production work than with mannequin photography if it’s too tedious for you, next time quote from a photo editing company.

Editing to remove wrinkles:

Flat lay process photography is not the ultimate solution for apparel products. As wrinkles, the angle of photos, color, texture, photo size and so on occur in images and make product photos beauty to the vein.

But going through the editing of photos, editing company can quickly increase/change/enhance color or recolor, adding new color contrast, adjust the lighting. In the final result, product photos get real beauty.

Color Clipping, photo post-production company, provides e-commerce ready images. So, if you don’t have the time to edit product photos on your own get a quote. Color Clipping designers ascertain rest of the work and quality of clothing pictures.