Why color drifts between the camera and the screen

A product, like a garment photographed on a phone, rarely looks the way it did on the hanger. The blue becomes a little more cyan, the beige a little more pink. The buyer notices when the parcel arrives, not before.

Most of that drift happens in three predictable places. Once you know where they are, you can control most of it with good software.

1. The light you shoot in

Mixed light is a common cause. A window on one side and a ceiling lamp on the other gives the camera two different white points to choose between, and it will pick one of them.

• Use one type of light source.
• If more light is needed, use reflectors or add another good quality light source.

2. What the phone decides for you

The built-in camera is tuned to make pictures pleasant, not accurate. Skin gets warmer, skies get bluer, contrast is lifted. That is fine for holidays and personal photos, and super wrong for a product page image.

3. The screen at the other end

You cannot control the buyer's screen. You can control that the file you publish is correct, so that every screen at least starts from the right values. There are multiple ways color can go wrong, but we need to know what we publish.