Product photos for your listings, without booking a shoot
If you sell online, you already know the part that costs most: getting photographs of the thing you
are selling. Not the listing, not the description — the pictures. A studio booking, a half-day of
someone else's time, and a wait before you can put the item up.
This page is about doing that part yourself, on the same afternoon, for a fraction of the money.
What a product shoot costs right now
Three studios that publish their own rates. Every figure below is quoted from the studio's own
price page, read on 23 September 2026. Where a figure is ours rather than theirs, it says so.
Philippines — Prodigital Media, Metro Manila
| What they list | Price |
|---|---|
| Per layout | PHP 2,600 (US$41.49), studio use included |
| Minimum order | 10 layouts, so PHP 26,000 (US$414.87) |
| Per layout with retouching | PHP 3,900 (US$62.23), up to 2 retouched images per layout |
At the retouched rate that is about US$31.12 for one finished image, and the studio will not
take a booking smaller than ten layouts.
Source: prodigitalmediaph.com/packages-rates/
Malaysia — The Photo Lab, Kuala Lumpur
| What they list | Price |
|---|---|
| Per photo, white background | from RM50 (about US$12.29) |
| Pack shot | from RM100 (about US$24.57) |
| Creative flat-lay | from RM150 (about US$36.86) |
| Minimum order | none — their own page answers "There isn't one." |
RM50 is the lowest published rate we could find from a Malaysian studio. It is one studio's
starting price, not a market rate and not an industry floor. We use it here precisely because it is
the comparison least favourable to us.
Source: thephotolab.com.my/price
South Africa — Monsoon Photography, Pretoria East
| What they list | Price before VAT | With VAT added |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 4 products, one image each | R1,500 shooting fee | about R1,725 (US$106.43) for the booking |
| 5 or more products, one angle each | R300 per product | about R345 (US$21.29) per product |
| 40 or more products | R250 per product | about R287.50 (US$17.74) per product |
Their page states "Prices are listed as ex VAT". The right-hand column is our own calculation,
their figure multiplied by 1.15 — they do not publish it.
Source: monsoonphotography.co.za/product-photography-rates-s
The exchange rates behind those dollar figures
1 USD = 62.67 PHP · 4.07 MYR · 16.207 ZAR, all taken on 23 September 2026.
Rates move every day. The local-currency figure is the one the studio actually quotes; the dollar
figure is here only so three countries can be read side by side.
What a studio gives you that this does not
Worth saying plainly, because a comparison that hides it is not worth reading.
A booked shoot includes work that happens before the shutter: styling the product, assembling it,
arranging it. It also hands you usage rights to the images the photographer delivers. None of that
is what happens here.
The comparison on this page holds for one thing — photographs to list your product with — and
that is the thing most sellers are actually buying.
How it works
- Upload a picture of your product. A phone photo is enough to start.
- Describe the shot you want: the background, the angle, the setting.
- Get the image back in about a minute, and make another if it is not right.
Video works the same way when you need a short clip for a listing or a feed.
Before you spend anything
A new account starts with free credits — enough to make several images and decide whether the
results are good enough for your listings before any money changes hands.
The per-task prices are on the pricing page, and they are the same prices this page compares
against. Nothing here is a promotional rate.