Which photos become video,
and which never will.

A usable pack is a clean packshot of the product at high resolution, sharp on the label, plus at least one alternative angle and one scale or in-use reference. The two things that make a pack unusable are irrecoverable: a label too low-resolution to stay legible in motion, and a single angle with no information about the sides or back of the product.

The minimum that works

• One clean packshot. Product isolated, even lighting, no hard shadow across the label. This is the reference for shape, proportion and colour.
• Label legible at full size. If you cannot read the small print when you zoom in on the original file, no process recovers it, and a label that is unreadable in a still becomes visibly wrong in motion.
• At least one other angle. Three-quarter or back. A single frontal image tells nothing about depth, cap shape or the back panel.
• One scale reference. The product held, or beside a known object. Without it, a 30ml bottle and a 300ml bottle are the same picture.

What makes a pack better than the minimum

None of these are required, all of them raise the ceiling: the product open as well as closed, texture or material close-ups, the packaging as well as the bare product, and a lifestyle frame that establishes the environment the product belongs in. For food, cosmetics and supplements, a macro of the texture is worth more than a fifth angle of the outside.

The unusable pack

Some material cannot be worked with, and it is fairer to say so before a quote than after a delivery:

• Marketplace-compressed images. A file pulled back down from a listing has already been resized and re-compressed. It is not a source file.
• Screenshots. Same problem, worse.
• Heavy retouching that changed the product. If the retouch removed a seam or reshaped the cap, motion will expose the inconsistency.
• Images you do not hold the rights to. Manufacturer-supplied imagery is the recurring case, and it is the same rights problem that gets videos rejected on Amazon.
• One image, one angle, nothing else. It can produce a single move. It cannot produce a range.

Products that are harder than they look

We say this before quoting rather than after: some properties are genuinely difficult to render convincingly. Fabric drape in motion, transparent liquid poured at speed, hinged mechanisms, and any shot requiring a face and a product to interact closely for a long take. For those, a hybrid with a small live shoot is the honest recommendation, and we make it.

How to check your own pack in five minutes

Open the largest file you have. Zoom to 100 per cent on the smallest text on the label. If it is crisp, the pack has a chance. Then count your distinct angles. One is a still. Two is a move. Three or more is a catalogue.

Send one SKU and we return one finished cut within two business days, free, before anything is signed. If the pack is not usable we tell you why rather than quoting around it.

Need this produced?

Ogamama produces the assets described on this page from product photography you already own, encoded to specification, on a written quote. See today’s service or send one SKU for a free tasting.