BigCommerce powers many of Canada’s mid-market and enterprise direct-to-consumer brands, and a meaningful share of growing Quebec brands choose BigCommerce when they outgrow Shopify or want native multi-storefront support across English Canada, French Canada and the U.S. The platform’s Stencil theme framework, headless commerce capabilities and B2B Edition each have their own image-handling quirks that affect product photography planning. BigCommerce product photography Montreal services exist to deliver imagery that performs across all of these contexts, with one master shoot covering DTC, B2B and headless channels.
This guide explains what makes BigCommerce different from Shopify and Wix for image planning, what specs you need to hit for Stencil themes and headless deployments, how the B2B Edition catalogue imagery differs from DTC, and how a Montreal product photography studio scopes a shoot for a BigCommerce launch or migration. If you operate or are migrating to BigCommerce, this is the playbook.
Why BigCommerce Image Planning Differs from Shopify and Wix
BigCommerce stores typically run more SKUs than Shopify stores — the platform’s strength is mid-market merchants with 500+ SKUs and complex catalogue logic — so consistency across thousands of frames matters more than any single hero. The Stencil theme framework also expects images at specific aspect ratios and sizes for the homepage carousel, the category grid, the product page main image and the related-products module, and theme designers can override default behaviours. Sending a BigCommerce merchant a Shopify-tuned shoot frequently produces inconsistent gallery rendering across modules.
The second difference is multi-storefront. BigCommerce’s multi-storefront feature lets a Montreal brand run separate storefronts for English Canada, French Canada and the U.S. with shared catalogue but localized imagery — for example, French label callouts on FR-CA storefronts and English variants for EN-CA. A photographer who plans for this on day one saves the merchant 30–50% on a future re-shoot.
BigCommerce Image Specs We Always Deliver
For every BigCommerce production at our Montreal product photography studio, we deliver these export presets:
- Stencil product page hero: 2048 × 2048 px square, sRGB JPEG at 90% quality
- Stencil category grid thumbnail: 1024 × 1024 px square, file weight under 180 KB
- Homepage carousel: 2400 × 1200 px (2:1) wide-format hero scenes
- Mobile-optimized hero: 1500 × 1500 px square, file weight under 220 KB, AVIF + WebP variants
- B2B linesheet hero: 2400 × 2400 px square with a clean pure-white background for buyer review
- Headless / API delivery: 4K master at 4096 × 4096 px for headless front-ends that need to crop on the fly
- Related-products and recently-viewed: 600 × 600 px thumbnails, file weight under 80 KB
That export bundle covers every default Stencil theme on the BigCommerce theme marketplace plus the most common headless front-ends (Next.js, Gatsby, Nuxt) that Montreal mid-market brands deploy.
BigCommerce B2B Edition: Catalogue Imagery That Closes Wholesale Orders
BigCommerce B2B Edition turns the storefront into a wholesale ordering portal: gated logins for approved buyers, custom price lists, quote-request workflows and large-line-item carts. Wholesale buyers behave very differently from DTC shoppers — they shop the linesheet, not the hero. So our B2B Edition shoots prioritize:
- Pure-white hero shots with consistent margins across every SKU in the catalogue, so a buyer reviewing 80 SKUs in a quote-request session sees a coherent linesheet
- Group / set photography for collections sold as wholesale bundles
- Detail-crop frames showing material, weight, dimension callouts that wholesale buyers ask about
- Lifestyle scenes for end-customer-facing marketing that the wholesale buyer will reuse on their own retail site
This pattern overlaps with Faire wholesale photography but is more catalogue-oriented and less lifestyle-driven. For a deeper view on wholesale-spec imagery, see our Faire wholesale marketplace photography guide.
Multi-Storefront Production for EN-CA, FR-CA and US Markets
For a Montreal brand running BigCommerce multi-storefront across English Canada, French Canada and the U.S., we plan the shoot to deliver three storefront-specific bundles in one production:
- EN-CA storefront: English label hero, Canadian-spelled callouts (“colour”, “centre”), CAD-pricing-aware lifestyle
- FR-CA storefront: French label hero, French nutrition and ingredient panels, Quebec-aware lifestyle scenes (winter scenes, French-speaking talent if used)
- US storefront: U.S. spelling, USD-pricing-aware lifestyle, broader American demographic representation in lifestyle frames
The product itself is photographed once with bilingual or universal label angles; the supporting frames are differentiated. This is far more efficient than three separate shoots and ensures visual coherence across markets. Our French-bilingual production approach describes the FR-CA side in more detail, and our Quebec-Made bilingual guide covers Quebec-specific labelling expectations.
Headless BigCommerce: 4K Masters and API Delivery
A growing share of BigCommerce stores run headless, with the storefront on Next.js, Gatsby, Vue/Nuxt or Hydrogen-style front-ends. Headless storefronts typically pull images via the BigCommerce Storefront API or a CDN like Cloudinary or Imgix, and they crop and resize on demand. This means the photographer should deliver oversized 4K masters, and the front-end developer’s image pipeline does the rest. We deliver every BigCommerce headless shoot at 4096 × 4096 px masters in addition to the standard Stencil presets, so the merchant has both options without re-shooting.
BigCommerce Categories We’ve Shot for Quebec Brands
Across the past 18 months we have delivered BigCommerce-Stencil-ready imagery for these Quebec mid-market categories:
- Industrial and B2B suppliers running 500–2,000 SKU catalogues — see industrial & B2B product photography
- Furniture and home-décor brands with showroom-driven retail plus DTC e-commerce — see furniture & home décor photography
- Specialty food and beverage brands selling DTC and wholesale to Quebec retailers — see food photography and beverage photography
- Footwear and apparel brands running BigCommerce for the speed and headless options — see footwear photography and apparel photography
- Watch and accessories importers operating B2B + DTC across the U.S. and Canada — see watch & accessories photography
Each category has its own technical requirements, but the BigCommerce-specific delivery is the same: Stencil presets, 4K masters, B2B linesheet hero, headless-ready exports.
Performance, Stencil Picture Tag and Core Web Vitals
BigCommerce Stencil renders product images through a `picture` tag with multiple `srcset` candidates by default — meaning the browser picks the right image size for the viewport. This works well only if the photographer supplies enough size variants. We deliver every BigCommerce production with five size variants per hero (4K, 2K, 1.5K, 1K, 600 px) so the Stencil `srcset` has real choices, not just one master being downconverted on the CDN. This materially improves Largest Contentful Paint on mobile, which Google measures as part of Core Web Vitals — see our Core Web Vitals & image optimization guide for the broader context.
Pricing and Scoping a BigCommerce Shoot
For a BigCommerce launch with 50 SKUs across DTC + B2B + headless delivery, expect to budget $4,500–$8,500 CAD all-in. For a smaller 15-SKU DTC-only launch on a Stencil theme, $2,200–$3,800 is typical. For a 200-SKU catalogue refresh on B2B Edition, $9,000–$18,000 depending on shoot complexity. Detailed pricing is on our product photography pricing page.
To scope your BigCommerce shoot, send us your SKU list, your Stencil theme (or headless front-end stack), and your storefront list (EN-CA, FR-CA, US, etc.). We quote within one business day and typically book within two to three weeks. Reach us via our contact page and we will help you plan the shoot to land all required deliverables in one production.
For Montreal mid-market brands on or migrating to BigCommerce, BigCommerce product photography Montreal is the bridge between a Stencil theme that looks great on launch day and a catalogue that converts at scale through year two and beyond. We are ready to shoot.
