€30 per image at the studio vs €0.25 automated: the real cost of product photography
Every e-commerce seller eventually faces the same math problem. You need white-background product images for Amazon, Zalando, your Shopify store. You get a studio quote: €20 per image, minimum 30 images, €600 minimum. For a 200-product catalog that's €4,000. Annually, if you refresh your catalog, it's €4,000 again. That's a fixed cost that scales directly with your catalog size — and never gets cheaper.
Where studios actually earn their price:
Lifestyle photography — models, props, scene styling, creative direction — is legitimately complex work that requires human judgment. If you need a jacket worn by a model in a specific setting, a studio is the right tool. But white-background images are not creative work. They are a mechanical process: remove the background, center the product, export at the right size. This is exactly the kind of work that should be automated.
The actual cost comparison:
• Premium studio: €30–40/image → 200 images = €6,000–8,000 → 1,000 images = €30,000–40,000
• Budget studio or freelancer editing: €15–20/image → 200 images = €3,000–4,000
• Centyr Pro (200 jobs/month, €49): ~€0.25/image → 200 images = €49/month
• Centyr Starter (50 jobs/month, €15): ~€0.30/image → 50 images = €15/month
The difference is not marginal. At studio rates, 200 images cost more than a full year of Centyr. At 1,000 images, the annual gap exceeds €30,000.
What you still need a photographer for:
Centyr processes images — it does not take them. You still need a photographer (or a decent camera and lightbox setup) to produce the raw shot. But there's a critical distinction: raw product photography on a neutral background — just the photographer capturing the product clearly — costs €5–12/image from a freelancer. The expensive part at studios is the editing: background removal, color correction, centering, format export. That editing work is what Centyr replaces.
The hybrid workflow most brands use:
1. Photographer produces raw shots on a neutral surface (€5–12/image)
2. Upload raw shots to Centyr
3. Centyr removes background, centers, scales, exports in all required formats
4. Download compliant ZIPs for each marketplace
This splits the human work (creative, irreplaceable) from the mechanical work (processing, automatable). A 200-product shoot with this approach costs roughly €1,000–2,400 for photography + €49/month for processing — vs €4,000–8,000 all-in at a studio.
How to calculate your ROI:
Take your current studio cost per image. Multiply by your average annual volume. That's your baseline. Centyr's monthly cost at your volume is your new processing budget. The difference is your annual saving. For most brands processing 50+ images per month, the payback period is under 30 days.