Plan the cost of your next product shoot.
Enter products, photos per product and your photographer’s rates. Add studio, model, stylist, retouching and reshoot budgets, then compare your project estimate with the monthly CatalogCut Stage plan for the same planned image count.
Free. No account. All amounts are USD; estimates are not quotes.
Put the calculator on your site
Paste this iframe into an HTML block. It opens with the same editable example. The frame scrolls on smaller screens; adjust its height to suit your layout.
How much will a product photo shoot cost?
Multiply your planned delivered photos by a per-image quote, or multiply rounded-up shoot days by a day rate. Add the project costs your quote excludes. This calculator keeps the studio or booking fee, model and stylist budgets separate so you can inspect the assumptions.
The default 120-photo illustration uses soona’s published nonmember price of USD 39 per photo plus one USD 149 booking fee: USD 4,829 before optional services. That is one vendor’s example, not an industry average. Shopify’s January 2026 guide gives broad photography ranges of USD 500–3,000 per day and USD 50–350 per image, with outliers and extra costs. Replace defaults with a quote for your actual products.
How should I budget for reshoots and editing?
Add extra retouching only when the included editing is insufficient. Fixed project budgets are charged once; they do not automatically multiply by booked days. If a crew member charges per day, enter the total expected crew budget for all days.
The subtotal is photography + studio or booking + model + stylist + planned photos × extra retouching rate. The reshoot reserve is subtotal × your chosen percentage, rounded to cents. Project total is subtotal + reserve. Divide that total by planned delivered photos for cost per photo. A percentage reserve is an assumption, not a prediction of how often a shoot will fail.
How does the CatalogCut comparison differ from a shoot quote?
The comparison shows one published monthly subscription that covers your planned number of standard 1K Stage images. The plan comes directly from CatalogCut’s plan catalog. If your volume exceeds every single monthly plan, the calculator shows that limit and links to pricing instead of inventing an overage price.
The AI amount excludes original product photography, human review, accepted extra variants and other shoot costs. Decide which images need real capture and which can be generated scenes before comparing budgets. Stage checks outputs against your original photo, but every seller still needs to review the result and the destination’s requirements. Read how Stage works.
Sources
Each rule was read on the publisher's own page on . Rules change; check the source before a large upload.
Questions
Where do the default photography prices come from?
The editable example uses soona’s nonmember Studio Pass: USD 39 per purchased photo and one USD 149 booking fee, checked October 21, 2026. Forty products with three photos each is an illustration. Optional model, stylist and extra retouching budgets start at zero. Memberships and additional services can change a real quote.
How does the calculator work with day rates?
Planned photos equal products multiplied by images per product. Booked days equal planned photos divided by delivered images per day, rounded up. Photography cost is booked days multiplied by day rate. The USD 2,900 day-rate default is Shootify’s published full-day on-model rate, including studio and basic styling. Models are booked separately; extras can cost more. Remove duplicated studio or stylist budgets. Forty delivered photos per day is an editable throughput assumption, not a Shootify promise. Confirm a complete quote.
How are reshoots, studio and crew fees counted?
Studio or booking, model and stylist budgets are fixed amounts for the whole project. Retouching is charged per planned photo. The reshoot reserve is your percentage of the complete subtotal, rounded to cents, and is added once. It does not create extra photos or automatically book more days or crew.
Which CatalogCut plan is used in the comparison?
The calculator reads the current published plan catalog and selects the cheapest single monthly plan with enough Stage credits for the planned image count. It assumes one credit per standard 1K Stage image and available monthly credits. The full monthly plan cost is shown, even if you use only part of its allowance. No overage or multiple-subscription price is invented.
Can the AI plan amount replace my entire photography budget?
No. It excludes source photography, human review, accepted extra variants and other shoot costs. A generated scene is not interchangeable with an original product documentation photo. Plan your required real photos and marketplace rules first. The photography estimate also excludes taxes, shipping, travel, licensing and services you have not entered.
Can I embed the calculator, and are my numbers uploaded?
Yes. Copy the titled iframe HTML below the calculator into your website. The embed keeps a Powered by CatalogCut link and starts with the same editable example. Calculations run in the browser; the tool does not submit your entered budget values or save a project.