Want to boost your holiday sales? Research shows that seasonal product photography directly impacts purchasing decisions. In 2020 alone, e-commerce sales during the U.S. holiday season grew by 20.6%, with seasonal marketing playing a crucial role.
Yet most sellers stick to generic lifestyle pictures, missing a crucial opportunity to stand out during the most profitable shopping seasons.
This guide shows you how to create stunning holiday product photos using Finegrain’s AI-powered editing tools.
Why seasonal photography drives sales 🔗
1. Seasonal photos create powerful emotional connections with your customers.
By tapping into holiday nostalgia and positive memories, they help customers envision your products in their own celebrations. This emotional resonance, combined with the time-sensitive nature of seasonal offerings, creates a natural sense of urgency that motivates purchases.
2. Seasonal photography is a marketing powerhouse.
By aligning your products with current seasons, you make them instantly relevant to your customers’ needs and desires. These timely, contextual images are more likely to be shared on social media, extending your reach organically. Plus, a year-round seasonal strategy helps maintain a steady sales flow, preventing the typical ups and downs many businesses face.
The real challenges behind seasonal photos 🔗
Complex objects mean complex editing
Some products are notoriously difficult to edit into new scenes. Natural materials, irregular shapes, and intricate details pose unique challenges. Traditional editing tools struggle with these complexities, often resulting in unrealistic or unprofessional results that can harm your brand.
The “flat photo” syndrome
Most seasonal product photos look obviously edited because they lack natural shadows, realistic lighting, and proper environmental interaction. These missing elements make products appear floating and artificial, reducing customer trust and purchase intent.
A significant time investment during the busiest time of the year
Creating fresh seasonal content traditionally demands a huge time investment exactly when you’re busiest. Between setting up photo shoots, gathering props and decorations, and spending hours on editing, many sellers find themselves choosing between managing their business and updating their product photos.
Most sellers face an impossible choice: invest significant time and money in seasonal photography, or stick with basic product shots and risk getting lost in the holiday rush.
How Finegrain makes editing easy 🔗
Transforming a basic product shot into a captivating holiday scene used to require professional photography skills or hours of painstaking editing.
With Finegrain, here’s how easy it becomes:
- Start with a simple product photo of your product
- Let Finegrain remove the background while preserving every detail
- Choose your holiday scene (by the Christmas tree, near a fireplace, etc.)
- Watch as Finegrain automatically handles lighting, shadows, and integration
The whole process lasts less than a minute thanks to the Finegrain Editor.
Let’s get started using one of the trickiest objects in product photography: a woven storage basket.
Woven baskets are notoriously difficult to edit. Each strand creates intricate patterns of light and shadow, while irregular shapes and natural textures make traditional editing tools struggle. The gaps between weaves pose an additional challenge - get them wrong, and your whole image looks artificial.
This picture is great, but definitely not suited for the winter holiday season.
Step 1: Remove the background.
Once I load the image on the Finegrain Editor, I can select the object of my choice by drawing a box around it.
Finegrain’s AI understands the complexity of woven textures. It precisely detects and preserves:
- Individual strands and fibers at the edges
- Natural variations in texture and color
- Gaps between weaves
- Complex handle shapes
- Fine details like tassels or decorative elements
The output image is a transparent PNG. Notice how each gap has been cut out.
Step 2: Blend your object into your scene.
Let’s pick a vibrant interior Christmas scene to insert our object.
I will load it in Finegrain into another tab as the cropped basket.
When I click the Blend feature, I will be asked to select a cutout, here the basket.
Once the basket is selected, I can resize it and move it around everywhere in the picture. Let’s drop it in a proper place.
Just press Enter or click the green arrow and…
Here you are!
As you can see, the basket is perfectly blended into the image. Finegrain understands how objects interact with their environment. When placing your product in a scene, it automatically:
- Creates natural contact shadows where the basket meets the floor
- Maintains realistic reflections on surrounding surfaces
- Integrates your product seamlessly with holiday decorations
- Adjusts lighting to match the scene’s atmosphere (soon)
Now you know how to create professional-looking holiday photos that show your products in their best light, ready to inspire customers and drive sales.
Go and give a try to the Finegrain Editor - we are looking forward to what you will create!
Additional tips for perfect blending 🔗
- Choose scenes with similar lighting to your product photo
- Place objects where they would naturally sit in the room
- Consider the scale of your product relative to other items
- Think about how the product would be used in the scene