Bottles, packaging, cosmetics, tableware, homeware, tools, arranged groups. Surface, reflection, shadow and colour — brought to one standard and then held across the whole set, which is the part that actually decides whether a category page looks finished.
A cut-out has a single hard problem: the edge. A still life frame has several at once, and they interact.
| Problem | What we do with it |
|---|---|
| Surface | Dust, fibres, fingerprints, scuffs, mould lines and glue residue removed at 100% zoom. Glass, chrome, brushed metal, matte plastic and liquid each get a different approach, because they fail differently. |
| Reflection and highlight | The studio, the softbox and occasionally the photographer taken back out of the product. Highlights shaped so the form reads, not flattened until the object looks printed on. |
| Shadow | Kept, rebuilt or created to the layout's rule — contact, drop or reflection — and then the same weight and angle on every frame in the set. |
| Colour | Matched to the real product, not to the frame. Where two source frames of the same item disagree, your spec sheet names which one is the truth, decided before the batch rather than during it. |
Also handled in the same pass where the brief asks: composition and prop cleanup, straightening and alignment, label and typography repair, liquid level and pour correction, and cut-out to pure white or transparent for the marketplace export.
Any competent retoucher can make one still life frame look good. A catalogue is a different problem, and it is the one that gets suppliers replaced.
Across a published set of twenty-four finished frames: every frame 2600 × 3400, background brightness 255 on all of them, no variance. That is measurable, and the method is written out so you can run the same four checks on whoever retouches your images now — including on us. The catalogue consistency standard.
Honest floor: below roughly 500 images a month we are the wrong studio and will say so. Rates are published in full rather than quoted on request.
Every frame is worked by hand by a named retoucher. Your files are not pushed through generative AI tools and are never used as training data, and we will sign your own DPA saying so.
On still life this matters more than on most categories. A generated highlight, an invented reflection or a rebuilt label is not a retouching choice — it is a picture of an object that does not exist, sold as the one that does. What you can require in writing.
The post-production pass on products arranged and lit in a studio rather than worn or held — bottles, cosmetics, packaging, tableware, homeware, tools and arranged groups. Composition and prop cleanup, surface correction, reflection and highlight control, shadow, and colour matched to the real product. At catalogue scale the hard part is holding one standard across hundreds of frames.
It depends on the surface more than the product. A matte box on a clean sweep sits near the bottom of the published band; glass, chrome, liquid and anything reflecting the studio sits higher, because each is a hand-built fix rather than a repeatable action. The full rate table is published.
A cut-out has one hard problem, the edge. A still life frame has several at once — surface, reflection, shadow, colour — and every one has to be decided the same way on frame two hundred as on frame one.
That is the thing to judge a supplier on, and it is measurable. Twenty-four published frames, all 2600 × 3400, background 255 on every one, no variance — and the measuring method is published so you can run it on anyone.
No. Hand-retouched frame by frame, never pushed through generative tools, never used as training data, and we sign your DPA saying so.
Yes, and we would rather. If there is no spec sheet, the free test and the first batch are where we build one and you confirm it in writing.
Free, on your own files, no call first — send the difficult ones, the glass and the chrome, not the easy box. For catalogues at 500 images a month or more. Above 2,000 a month the paid production fit test puts a real batch through the floor instead.