The short answer
Studios are best for clean white-background packshots in volume. You post the product, they shoot it, you get consistent images back, and the per-image price drops the more you send. If you've got a lot of products that all need the same plain treatment for a marketplace, this is the sensible route.
Photographers (freelance or creative) are best for anything involving people, styling and brand campaigns, where somebody needs to make decisions about mood and props and who's holding the thing. AI services are best for new scenes of a product you already have a good photo of: fast, cheap per shot, but with real limits that we cover below. None of them is the "right" answer on its own. Some brands use more than one.
Packshot studios: post your product, get white-background images
A packshot studio does one thing and does it repeatedly: your product, on white or a simple background, lit properly, shot the same way every time. You post the item, they photograph it and send it back with the images. That's the whole process, and for a lot of sellers it's genuinely all they need.
We checked three UK studios' published prices, and they price in quite different ways, so it's worth looking at each.
The Photography Firm (photographyfirm.co.uk, checked 3 October 2026) prices per final image, and all of its prices are plus VAT. White or simple-background packshots cost £35 an image for up to 5 images, and the price drops as you add more: £24 for 6 to 20, £18 for 20+, and £14 for 50+. For 100+ images you ask for a quote. Group shots start from £45, £30, £25 and £22 across the same bands. There's a minimum charge of £150 plus VAT on all bookings, which matters a lot if you only have a couple of products. Add the 20% VAT and the per-image range of £14 to £35 becomes £16.80 to £42, and the £150 minimum becomes £180.
Glassware, jewellery and technical items carry a set-up fee from £100 an hour. Retouching beyond the standard (think broken packaging or colour changes) is £40 an hour. Lifestyle images are the same per-image rate plus a set fee, from £45 for a small lifestyle set and from £150 for a large room set, with full location sets such as a kitchen, bathroom or outdoor scene at a minimum of £375.
Silkwood Studio (silkwoodstudio.co.uk, checked 3 October 2026) prices per product rather than per image, and you post the product and it's returned. A Basic shot is £15 per product, which gets you one high-resolution image on pure white. The Standard pack is £40 per product, with up to 3 angles on white and light retouching. The Premium showcase is £70 per product, with up to 5 styled and angled images. The page doesn't state whether VAT is included, so check before you order.
Light Studios (lightstudios.org, checked 3 October 2026) goes the volume route. A packshot front image is £10 for 1 to 35 images, £9 for 36 to 60, £8.50 for 61 to 100, £8 for 101 to 200, and £7.50 at 200+ (call for prices at that level). Each further image of the same item is 50% less. Again, VAT isn't stated on the page.
So three studios, three pricing shapes: per image with a minimum charge, per product in tiers, and per image with a big volume discount. Comparing them properly means working out what your own order would actually cost under each, and that's easier when you know what your product count and angle count look like. The full breakdown is in the product photography cost guide so you don't have to do the arithmetic from scratch.
One practical point. Posting your product means it's out of your hands for a while, so build that into your launch dates. And if you sell glass, jewellery or anything shiny, ask about set-up fees before you commit, because that's where a cheap-looking quote can quietly grow.
Freelance and creative photographers
Now the other end of the spectrum. A freelance or creative photographer works differently: a person with a camera, an eye and (usually) some opinions about how your product should look. That's a good thing, and it's why this route exists.
What you're paying for is judgement. Styling, props, choosing a location, working with a model, building a set that says something about your brand. If you're launching a new range and you want a campaign look, a hero image for your homepage, social content that doesn't look like everyone else's, this is where a photographer earns their fee. A packshot service is set up for plain, repeatable images, and an AI service can't really invent a brand for you.
Rates vary a lot. Some photographers charge by the day or the hour, others just quote per project. We can't give you a typical figure here, so we won't guess. The one number we can give from the studios above is Light Studios' creative photography at £80 an hour, VAT not stated. Treat that as one data point only. For anything beyond that, ask for quotes.
And the costs stack up beyond the photographer's own time. Props, styling, models, a location hire, maybe an assistant. The Photography Firm's published model rates (from £25 an hour for an everyday model to around £50 an hour for an agency one, usually with a 2-hour minimum) give you a feel for how quickly a people shoot gets bigger than a product-only one.
The best way to keep this under control is to write a brief before you contact anyone. Say what the images are for, where they'll be used, how many you need, what mood you want, and whether anyone's wearing or holding the product. Send two or three reference images of looks you like. A photographer with a clear brief can give you an accurate quote; one without it will either guess high or, worse, guess low and then add things later.
None of this is a knock on the cost. A good photographer who understands your brand is worth it for the right job. The right jobs are a launch, a campaign or a people shoot.
AI product photo services
This is the newest route, so we'll be specific.
An AI product photo service takes a photo you already have (a clean, well-lit shot of your actual product) and places that product into new scenes: a kitchen worktop, a bathroom shelf, an outdoor table, whatever you ask for. What you get is your existing photo reimagined in a different setting, rather than a new photograph of your item. That distinction matters, because the quality of what comes out depends heavily on the quality of what goes in.
Product Photo Shots is one such service, so we'll describe how it works factually. Before you pay, it studies your photo and lists what must stay the same in every shot. That check is free and takes about a minute; in our own test the precheck measured 11 seconds on 1 October 2026. Packs are priced with VAT included: 3 shots for £19 (£6.33 a shot), 5 shots for £29 (£5.80), 10 shots for £49 (£4.90), and a custom order of 11 to 40 shots at £4.50 a shot. Shots come in square 1:1, portrait 4:5, story 9:16 and wide 16:9. In testing, a 3-shot order took about 4 minutes.
If a shot changes the product, it's remade with a specific fix, up to three attempts in all. If it's still wrong after that, a person checks it, and it's never delivered as is. Every shot is labelled as AI-made, and the files carry standard AI-provenance metadata. The service only works on products the customer owns or sells; well-known brands' products can't be shot (image services refuse them), and customers are told before paying.
Now the limits, because there are some, and you should know them before you spend anything. From our own tests: certain materials are hard. We saw colour drift on a coral skincare jar and on amber perfume (one perfume attempt was rejected as "colour wrong"), and brushed steel picked up its surroundings badly enough that two steel bottle scenes failed all three attempts and were never delivered. Small printed text was another weak spot. In a test with a famous-brand trainer, a tongue label on the product came out garbled on most shots, while logos and large text held. So if your product is a shiny steel flask with tiny ingredient text, expect to hit walls.
There's also a risk with generic tools. General AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can restage a product, but they redraw it in the process, so labels, logos and colours can change. There's no built-in check against the original. You might get a lovely scene with a slightly different label on your jar, and unless you compare very carefully you won't notice until a customer does. That's the main reason a service with a check against your original photo is a different proposition from just pasting your picture into a chat window.
If you want the longer version, the AI product photography guide goes through it properly. In short, AI is a fast, cheap way to get extra scenes from a photo you already have. It isn't a replacement for taking that first good photo, and it isn't the right tool for every product.
How to choose
Right, so which one? Start with what the image is for.
If you need a marketplace main image on a plain white background, a packshot studio is the tidy answer, or you can do it yourself with a bit of care. The white-background product photography guide covers the DIY version.
If you want lifestyle scenes for ads and listings (the product on a worktop, in a room, in use), you've got two sensible routes: AI, if you have a good photo to start from and your product avoids the hard materials above, or a photographer if you want something properly styled or more distinctive. The lifestyle product photos guide covers lifestyle scenes in more detail.
If you need people wearing or using the product, that's a photographer.
If your budget is tight, start with DIY. A decent phone and a window will get you surprisingly far, with a white sheet and some patience thrown in, and the cheap product photos guide walks through it. You can always pay for a studio or AI shots later, once you know which products are actually selling.
And honestly, plenty of brands mix them: a studio or DIY for the white packshots, AI for a few extra scenes, a photographer once a year for the big campaign. That is simply matching the tool to the job.