A guide to virtual photography for eCommerce and retail brands

With 75%* of online shoppers relying on product images to make purchasing decisions, high-quality visuals aren’t just important; they’re essential for increasing conversions and revenue. (Source: Photography Industry Statistics and Facts, 2024, StudioPod.)

Traditional product photography can be expensive and time-consuming, and it requires access to costly resources (like high-end cameras and lighting equipment) and expert talent (like a professional photographer and shoot coordinators). 

Virtual photography offers a more affordable solution that doesn’t rely on an extensive physical setup and specialized team members. 

Thanks to the use of 3D models and advanced software, virtual photography enables you to create photorealistic product images that are indistinguishable from visuals created with traditional photography — without ever touching a camera. The whole process is faster, more affordable, and far more scalable.

This guide outlines how virtual photography is transforming product visuals and what the process looks like with Omi.

How does virtual photography work?

As we mentioned above, virtual photography is a way to produce product visuals that eliminates bottlenecks — and enables incredible creativity.

But is virtual photography “real” photography? The answer is yes and no.

While traditional photography involves equipment, a virtual studio doesn’t. No cameras, lights, or backdrops. Everything happens in your browser — dragging-and-dropping items, adjusting lighting, moving the virtual camera, swapping backgrounds and colors, and so on. You stage and style your scene virtually, then click a button and your image (or video) is generated from the 3D objects also known as “digital twins.”

The result? Indistinguishable from traditional photography.

With Omi, the virtual photography process is incredibly straightforward. You simply:

1. Send your products to Omi for 3D modeling. The model is a digital representation of your product, which you’ll use to stage virtual scenes.

2. Stage your virtual scenes. Once the 3D model is ready, you use it in the Virtual Studio, where you have full creative control. You move objects, adjust the lighting, choose backgrounds and props, and capture any angle, all in your browser.

3. Export your images (or videos). Once you’re done, our software renders your scene into the image or video you created. You can export your scene in different ratios for eCommerce, website, emails, and as videos or gifs, and even print.

Why use virtual photography over traditional photography

Virtual photography enables incredible scale and creativity of your production, while eliminating bottlenecks and lowering costs. In addition to that, production moves in-house without the need for new hires.

It leads to higher conversion rates and less organizational complexity

Omi clientele frequently achieve 19% higher conversion rates, 32% higher engagement rates, and lower return rates of purchased products. In other words, channel owners have reasons to pop the champagne.

In addition to that, virtual photography reduces organizational complexity. Our clientele often produce 5x more content than before at up to 90% lower costs, while still reducing their revision cycles and speeding up time-to-market for product launches.

This is only possible with dramatic reduction in complexity, and improvements to efficiency.

Some businesses complement virtual photography with traditional photography, especially if they want human or animal subjects to interact with their images. This, of course, moves away from ‘product photography’ and towards normal photography.

Either way, virtual photography is the future.

It scales with you better than traditional photography

As your brand grows, so do your content needs. Suddenly, you need product visuals for new markets, marketing assets for more campaigns, and a constant stream of fresh visual content for your socials. 

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to scale traditional photography to meet demand. Each new product variation, seasonal campaign, or market expansion requires coordinating new photoshoots, shipping physical samples, and waiting on post-production edits. Any updates, like new packaging or a different color, mean starting the process from scratch.

With virtual photography, scaling content production becomes much easier. All you need is a 3D model of your product, and you can create infinite variations of product visuals as needed for any channel, campaign, or market.

Moët Hennessy Wine Estates experienced this transformation firsthand. Coordinating photoshoots across nine wine houses was a logistical challenge that led to delays and inconsistent visuals.

By adopting Omi's virtual photography solution, the brand accelerated content creation by 3x and was able to produce over 100 visuals in mere weeks. This shift allowed their global teams to generate consistent, high-quality content efficiently, thereby meeting the demands of their markets without the bottlenecks they faced before.

It meets your rapidly evolving needs 

Marketing demands change constantly. One month you need catalog visuals, and the next you're launching a seasonal campaign. Traditional creative product photography struggles to keep up and involves reshoots, scheduling delays, and time-consuming editing. This lack of flexibility can be costly. 

A skincare brand reacting to a viral trend would need to order samples, book a shoot, and wait for post-production before receiving visuals. Any delay, from shipping issues to a key team member being out sick, could stall the campaign even further. By the time visuals are ready, competitors may have already seized the opportunity — and you’ve been left behind.

With virtual photography, you bypass these potential roadblocks. In a virtual studio like Omi’s, you can quickly swap backgrounds or pre-approve templates so you can stay on track with — or even ahead of — content production goals. 

Daan Tech needed to find a way to keep up with seasonal events, timely sales, and brand collaborations. Omi enables them to create template scenes and modify visuals as needed without starting from scratch every time they need a new product image. This agility helps them stay ahead and stay relevant.

“A virtual photo studio gives marketing teams product photography at a moment's notice. What used to take weeks (and cost thousands) can now be done right in their browser. The virtual aspect offers more creativity and brand control, plus a more accessible way to produce content for all channels without much project management.”
— Tim Arlestig, Senior Content Manager at Omi

It helps you control your brand image across channels

Different team members handling product visuals across your website, social media accounts, and ad campaigns can lead to inconsistencies in lighting, angles, or styling. This makes it difficult to control your brand image and aesthetic across channels. Throw in various international markets and this challenge multiplies. 

Virtual photography tools like Omi give you greater control over your visuals by enabling creative teams to work from a pre-approved framework. This ensures consistent, on-brand imagery across all channels and markets. 

Here’s how it works with Omi: 

• Lock down templates so teams can easily swap products without changing camera angles or framing.

• Guarantee identical lighting and positioning for every white background shot.

• Standardize accessories and styling for a unified look and feel.

• Build a custom accessory catalog to keep design elements consistent.

Omi customer Endro Cosmétiques used to struggle with inconsistent lighting during packshot shoots. The solution? Virtual photography. And Maison Black Honey created their own ‘universe’ of product visuals with a one-man operation.

Now, their product photos are always identical to guarantee a consistent brand image across their entire product catalog. The time savings are dramatic, too, with packshot creation shrinking from a full day to just five minutes.

It allows anyone on your team to create product visuals

Traditionally, high-quality product photography required brands to hire professionals, book studios, and manage post-production, making the process expensive and time-consuming. Every new campaign, product variation, or market expansion adds another layer of cost and complexity. 

Virtual photography removes these barriers. Instead of relying on specialists, anyone on your team can create studio-quality images in minutes, whether they work in marketing, design, or content creation.

Here are just a few of the features that make it so easy for anyone to become a virtual photographer and create product visuals with Omi:

• Drag-and-drop controls simplify edits. Teams can adjust backgrounds, lighting, and accessories in seconds.

• Instant product swaps eliminate reshoots. Update visuals for new collections without repeating the production process.

• Pre-set export sizes optimize content for any platform. Teams can generate images for Amazon, Instagram, and Shopify instantly.

“I'm a terrible designer, yet I've made images that look like a million bucks,” says Omi Senior Content Manager Tim Arlestig. “Anyone can use Omi's studio. With templates, accessories, drag-and-drop elements, and the product swap feature, it's like a playground for creating professional imagery.”