The Maker's Pre-Fair Photoshop Checklist: Clean Shots, Honest Edits, Consistent Listings

It is November 2026, which means the winter fair season is already tapping you on the shoulder. You have stock, labels, a float and a slightly optimistic box of fairy lights. What you probably do not have is a studio. That is fine. A north-facing window, a sheet of white card and an hour in Photoshop will get you most of the way there — as long as you treat editing as tidying, not reinventing.

Start at the window, not in Photoshop

A north-facing window on a grey, overcast day is the closest thing most UK homes have to a softbox. Put your kitchen table side-on to the window, not facing it. Tape a piece of white foam board or a large sheet of cartridge paper to the wall behind the products, and prop another white board opposite the window to bounce a little light back into the shadows. That is your entire set.

Use a tripod if you have one, or stack books under the camera. Keep the ISO low, the aperture around f/5.6 to f/8, and the shutter speed whatever the light allows. More important than any of those numbers: do not move the camera between products. Put a strip of masking tape on the table where the tripod legs sit and a pencil mark where the product goes. Consistency across a range is worth more than one hero shot.

Before you start, shoot a frame with a grey card or a plain sheet of white paper in the position your product will occupy. You will use that frame later to set white balance for the whole batch.

Clear the clutter with masks, not miracles

Kitchen tables have crumbs, tea rings and a background of washing-up. You do not need to rebuild the scene. You need layer masks and a little patience.

Duplicate your background layer, then use Select Subject or the Object Selection tool to get a rough selection of the product. Do not trust it blindly — zoom in and refine the edges with the Polygonal Lasso or a hard-edged brush on the mask. Straight-sided objects like boxes, frames and chopping boards are easier with the Pen tool or a simple rectangular selection. Feather the mask by a pixel or two so the edge does not look cut out with scissors.

For dust, scratches and the odd crumb on the table, use the Healing Brush or Spot Healing Brush on a separate layer set to Sample: All Layers. That way you are not destroying the original pixels. Content-Aware Fill is fine for small distractions, but keep it small. If you are removing a whole background, mask it — do not clone a new kitchen.

And keep the shadow. A product with no shadow looks like it is floating in a void, which is the visual equivalent of a shop assistant holding an item up by a piece of string. Use a separate shadow layer and lower the opacity rather than erasing it entirely.

Match the range: white balance and scale

This is where a lot of maker listings fall apart. One photo is warm and yellow, the next is cold and blue, and the third looks like it was taken in a different postcode. Buyers notice. Photoshop makes it easy to fix.

Open the grey-card frame in Camera Raw, use the White Balance eyedropper on the grey card, then note the temperature and tint. Open your product images as a batch in Camera Raw, apply the same values, and use Synchronise to push the settings across the selected files. If you did not shoot a grey card, use a Curves adjustment layer with the grey-point eyedropper on something neutral in the image — a white label, a piece of white card, or the background paper. Avoid clicking on the product itself unless it is genuinely neutral.

Scale is trickier. You cannot fake size convincingly, and you should not try. What you can do is keep the framing consistent: same distance, same crop ratio, same background. If you sell a range of sizes, show the smallest and largest side by side once, with a ruler or a familiar object, and label it honestly. For individual listings, keep the product filling a similar proportion of the frame so the grid looks tidy. Use Photoshop guides and a consistent crop — square for some marketplaces, 4:5 for others — and stick to it.

Export for two jobs: screens and stall signs

Your photos have two audiences this winter: someone scrolling on a phone and someone squinting at your stall from three metres away.

For online listings, export JPEGs at roughly 2000 pixels on the longest edge, sRGB colour profile, quality around 80–85. That is plenty for Etsy, Shopify or your own site, and it keeps file sizes sensible. Use File > Export As, tick Convert to sRGB, and apply output sharpening for Screen at a standard amount. Do not bother chasing 72 dpi — it is a printing term that means very little on the web, despite what you may have read.

For printed stall signs, work at A4 or A3 at 300 ppi, sRGB unless your printer specifically asks for CMYK. If you are sending to a professional printer, add 3 mm bleed and keep text away from the edge. For home printing, leave a comfortable white margin and check a proof on paper before you print twenty. Name files clearly — oak-serving-board-2026-01.jpg beats IMG_4832-final-final.jpg — and keep a folder of web exports and a separate folder of print exports. Future you will be grateful.

The honesty bit

This is the part that matters more than any slider. Photoshop is for cleaning up a photograph, not for inventing a product. Do not use Generative Fill to add a strap, a glaze, a pattern or a finish that the buyer will not receive. Do not clone out a flaw that is part of the item unless you are also fixing the item or disclosing it. Do not warm up a grey ceramic until it looks honey-coloured because honey-coloured sells better.

UK buyers have straightforward rights to return items that are not as described, and a listing photo that misrepresents colour, size or detail is a fast route to returns, bad reviews and a miserable fair. Show the real thing. If you use a prop for scale, say so or keep it out of the frame. If the light in your kitchen makes the product look slightly different from daylight, compare it side by side under a window before you export. Honest photos build trust, and trust is what turns a stall browser into a repeat customer.

A quick routine to keep you sane

Shoot everything in one session at the window, with the same camera position and a grey-card frame. Import, apply lens correction, sync white balance, mask the background, heal the dust, crop to a consistent ratio. Export a web version and a print version. Check the web version on your phone and the print version on paper. Then stop. You have a stall to pack.

You do not need a studio. You need consistency, a bit of masking and the discipline to leave the product looking like itself. Good luck with the fair — and save me a mince pie.