Symmetry, creases, shape and colour — on tees, knitwear, denim, shirting, kidswear and accessories. The craft is removing the styling and keeping the fabric, and then doing it identically on the three hundredth garment.
| Step | What it means |
|---|---|
| Symmetry and alignment | Sleeves, hems and plackets squared to the frame. Collars evened. The garment straight to the grid, not to the table it was shot on. |
| Wrinkles and fold lines | Packaging creases, pin marks, tape and foam taken out — while the fabric's own texture and drape stay. More on wrinkle removal. |
| Shape correction | The garment made to read as the cut it actually is, rather than the shape it happened to fall into on the table. |
| Cut-out and background | Hand-drawn path to pure white or transparent, with the shadow rule the layout asks for applied the same way every time. |
| Colour | Matched to the real fabric. When two frames of the same garment disagree, the spec sheet names which is the truth — agreed before the batch, not during it. |
Sheer, lace, heavy texture and fine repeating pattern take longer than a cotton tee. Those are the frames worth sending in a test, not the easy ones.
Neither is better. They answer different questions, and the mistake is shooting one way for the whole catalogue.
| Flat lay | Ghost mannequin | |
|---|---|---|
| Shows | Cut, pattern, colour, detail | Volume, drape, fit, the inside collar |
| Suits | Tees, knitwear, denim, basics, kidswear, accessories | Anything where fit is the selling point — outerwear, tailoring, structured pieces |
| Shoot cost | Lower — faster on set | Higher — more setups per garment |
| Retouch cost | Lower — no interior reconstruction | Higher — the neck joint is built by hand |
We do both, daily, and will say which one a given range should be in if you ask. Ghost mannequin service · the longer comparison.
A flat lay grid is the most unforgiving layout in e-commerce: forty garments side by side on a white page, where any drift in background, crop or baseline shows instantly.
Measured across a published set of twenty-four finished frames covering seven different material problems — tailoring, ribbed knit, sheer silk, denim, moulded activewear, waxed cotton and lace: every frame 2600 × 3400, background brightness 255 on all of them, no variance. The measuring method is published so you can run it on any supplier. The catalogue consistency standard.
Below roughly 500 images a month we are the wrong studio and will say so. Rates published in full.
The post-production pass on garments photographed laid flat from above. Symmetry and alignment, wrinkle and crease removal, shape correction, removal of pins, tape and foam, cut-out to pure white or transparent, and colour matched to the real fabric. Across a catalogue the decisive part is every garment sitting at the same size on the same baseline.
Flat lay is faster to shoot, cheaper to retouch, and suits pieces whose shape is obvious lying down. Ghost mannequin suits anything where fit is the selling point. Most catalogues need both; the mistake is shooting one way for everything.
It sits at the lower end of apparel post-production because there is no interior reconstruction, and falls further with monthly volume. Fabric moves it more than garment type — sheer, lace and fine pattern take longer than a cotton tee.
That is the craft. Styling creases, packaging folds and pin marks come out; texture and drape stay. Over-smoothed flat lay reads as plastic and is the commonest failure in cheap apparel retouching.
No. Hand-retouched frame by frame, never run through generative tools, never used as training data, and we sign your DPA saying so.
Yes. Send finished frames you are happy with alongside the test and we work to those, then write the spec sheet from what the test taught us and you confirm it.
Free, on your own files, no call first — and send the sheer and the lace, not the cotton tee. For catalogues at 500 images a month or more. Above 2,000 a month the paid production fit test runs a real batch through the floor instead.