Using a Scanner for Product Photography A method of taking product photos you might not have considered

Examples of product photos taken with a scanner and then edited in Clipping Magic

Which scanners work

We tried both a cheap scanner built into an all-in-one printer and a more expensive high DPI scanner for this. We found that cheap scanners did not produce a great result. They didn't have the resolution and the depth of field to handle anything other than flat documents.

Photos taken of earrings on a High DPI (left) vs Cheap (right) Scanner

What did work great was the Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner (currently available for around 200 bucks on Amazon, you can also find refurbished ones for less). This scanner's resolution went all the way up to 12,800 DPI (Dots Per Inch, or in simpler terms how much detail it's capturing) which is probably more than you would ever need. You should use a higher DPI for your smaller objects, but you probably won't need to go past 1,600 DPI.

How to use a scanner to take product photos

Place your object on the scanner bed. Make sure whatever you're going to scan is as close to the bed glass as possible.

Instead of closing the top over the products, we just covered them with a sheet of white paper. You can play around with what works best for your products, whether that's using the cover, a piece of paper, or leaving it completely uncovered.

This is the resulting product photo from this scanning method after being edited in Clipping Magic

Which products does a scanner work well with

Scanners can work great for smaller, flatter objects that aren't reflective or metallic. We tried scanning earrings, trinkets, and flatter alcohol bottles and got similar results to what we achieved with a DSLR + studio setup.

Photos taken of earrings on a DSLR (left) vs the High DPI Scanner (right) — both were edited in Clipping Magic

Which products do not work well with a scanner

We found that highly reflective or metallic products don't work well with a scanner. This includes gold/silver earrings and gemstones. The way the scanner captures an image doesn't work well for reflective objects. This is strongly evident in the example below where we compare the image of a highly reflective gold earring taken both in a light box with a DSLR and in our scanner.

Photos taken of reflective metallic earrings on a DSLR + light box (left) vs the High DPI Scanner (right) — both were edited in Clipping Magic