Most apparel brands in Montreal walk into a shoot day with a Pinterest board and a hope. The Pinterest board is fine. The hope is the problem. A multi-channel program (DTC site, wholesale line sheet, retail print, lookbook PDF, paid social) wants different crops, different colour pipelines, and different file specs from a single garment. If those are not planned before the steamer is plugged in, you re-shoot. Re-shoots double the cost and push the launch.
This is a working scope guide for apparel product photography Montreal brand operations leads use when they are quoting a real season. It assumes you have shot garments before and now need to make the program rigorous across more than one channel.
Why apparel photography is harder than catalogue product photography
A bottle of skincare sits where you put it. A jacket does not. Fabric drapes, wrinkles relax, sleeves twist, fit changes between sizes, dye lots wander, hardware reflects, and the shape of a garment on a person is not the shape of the same garment lying on a table or pinned to a mannequin. Every one of those variables is a decision someone has to make on set, or in post, expensively.
The second compounding factor is volume. A fashion drop is often forty to two hundred SKUs in a single shoot block. Catalogue work for a furniture brand might be twenty hero shots in a week. Apparel wants ten times the throughput at the same colour fidelity. That changes how you light, how you cull, how you back up, and how you brief the retoucher.
Three image types every Montreal fashion brand needs (ghost mannequin, flat lay, on-model)
For a complete program, every SKU usually needs three treatments.
Ghost mannequin for the PDP hero. Clean, hollow garment shape, no human face to age the picture, easy to swap across colourways. This is the workhorse e-commerce shot and the one wholesale buyers look at first on a line sheet. We cover the technique in detail in our notes on how we build invisible mannequin composites for hangtag and PDP work.
Flat lay for size comparison, fabric texture close-ups, and accessory pairing. Flat lays photograph fast and edit fast, which is why they dominate Instagram carousels and email hero blocks. They are weak for fit communication, which is why they cannot stand alone. A Montreal jewelry case study from my portfolio shows how an accessory hero frame can stand on its own when the brand is small and the styling is tight.
On-model for fit, scale, and emotional register. Hire fit models who match your sample size. A women’s sample 4 on a sample 8 model communicates the wrong story to the customer and produces returns. For brand-campaign frames where the model carries the picture rather than the garment, see the on-set storytelling approach we use on campaign days.
Fabric-faithful colour: ICC profiles, soft proof, and dye-lot variance
Colour is where apparel programs lose customer trust. A navy hoodie that ships purple is a return ticket. The fix is boring discipline at three stages.
On set. Shoot a colour checker frame at the start of every lighting setup and again whenever a bulb is moved or a window opens. Keep a dye-lot reference swatch from production in the frame for the first capture of each new garment, then remove it for the hero. Without the swatch, the retoucher has nothing to anchor against six weeks later.
In post. Profile your monitor monthly with a hardware calibrator, edit on a known display, and soft-proof to the destination output before approving. Our working notes on ICC profile management and soft-proofing for catalogue jobs cover the specific profiles we ship for Shopify, Faire, and offset print.
At handoff. Embed the colour profile in every file. Stripping the profile because the website “will convert it” is how brand reds become brand pinks on half your customers’ phones.
Crop standards across web, wholesale spec sheets, and retail print
One shoot, several crops. Plan them before the shutter clicks or you crop into a model’s eye in post.
For the DTC site, the PDP hero is typically a 4:5 portrait, 2000 px on the long edge, ghost mannequin centred with even headroom and footroom. Mobile is the primary surface (about seventy percent of traffic) so the garment must read at 400 px tall.
For wholesale, Faire and NuOrder line sheets want square 1:1 at 1200 px with the garment isolated on pure white (#FFFFFF, not eggshell). Buyers reject mixed-background line sheets at the door.
For retail print, including lookbooks, in-store signage, and trade-show banners, capture at full sensor resolution and deliver at the destination pixel count. A 24 by 36 in-store sign at 200 dpi wants 4800 by 7200 px. Crop into a 2000 px web file and you have a blurry print.
File deliverables by channel: sRGB JPG for web, CMYK TIFF for print, PDF spec sheets for wholesale
Each channel wants a different file. Mixing them is the most common reason a launch slips.
Web. sRGB JPG, quality 80, profile embedded, long edge 2000 px for PDP hero and 1200 px for grid thumbs. WebP is fine if your CDN serves it, but always keep the JPG master.
Wholesale line sheets. PDF compiled from 1:1 square JPGs at 1200 px, with garment name, SKU, wholesale price, MSRP, and size run on the page. Faire is finicky about file weight; keep each PDF under 10 MB.
Retail print. CMYK TIFF, 300 dpi, US Web Coated SWOP v2 or your printer’s profile, layers flattened, no transparency. Send a JPG soft-proof alongside so the print buyer can confirm intent on screen.
Paid social. sRGB JPG cropped to 1:1, 4:5, and 9:16 from the same hero, three crops per garment minimum. Hand the retoucher a crop guide on day one so they batch instead of one-off.
Production planning before the shoot: garment prep, steaming, lint roll, model fittings
Half of a good apparel shoot happens before the camera comes out.
Steam every garment the day before, hang it on a wide cedar hanger, and store it in a clean wardrobe room. A steamer on set is for touch-ups, not for working through eighty units from a freight box. Black knits attract lint; a roller and a vacuum table near set save twenty minutes per garment in retouching.
Run model fittings the morning of the shoot, not at call time. Pin to true sample size, photograph the pinned fit on a test frame, and confirm with the brand lead before you start the production run. If your model’s sample size drifted in the last month, you find out in the fitting and not on file delivery.
Build a SKU run sheet that orders garments by colour family and silhouette. Shooting all the blacks in one block, then all the creams, then all the prints keeps your white balance honest and reduces the lighting tweaks between frames.
Budgets and timelines for Montreal fashion brand apparel shoots in 2026
Real numbers, not aspirational ones. A focused ghost-mannequin shoot of forty SKUs runs roughly one shoot day plus three retouching days, and lands in the $3,500 to $5,500 range depending on retouching depth and rush. Add on-model frames with one fit model and you are at two shoot days and $6,500 to $9,500. A full multi-channel program (ghost mannequin plus on-model plus campaign lifestyle) across one hundred SKUs typically runs five shoot days and a two-week retouching window, billed between $14,000 and $22,000.
Quebec brands shooting for a fall launch should book studio time in June or early July; the September catalogue rush books out fast. For holiday drops, hold a tentative slot by mid-August. Lead time on retouching also lengthens in Q4, so brands that want a December email push should send the final approved RAW selection by the second week of October.
Lookbook vs linesheet: two different shoot briefs from the same SKU list
The linesheet serves wholesale buyers who skim a hundred SKUs per session looking for fit silhouette, colour accuracy, order-form clarity. Register is flat and repeatable: garment isolated on a single ground, neutral or no model, lighting identical frame to frame, one front and one back and one detail per SKU. Buyers judge the line in fifteen minutes. We cover the rhythm in our notes on building a buyer-ready linesheet from scratch.
The lookbook serves DTC customers and trade-press editors who buy a feeling. Register is mood, location, story, casting. The shot list shrinks to twenty hero SKUs and the per-frame budget grows for styling, hair, makeup, and a location that does brand work. Mixing the two days yields a linesheet with distracting backgrounds and a lookbook with overlit frames; the editorial side is documented in the seasonal lookbook approach we run for editorial shoots.
Holding the brand red through dye-lot drift and a six-month gap between shoots
We keep a physical reference library: a dated swatch from each previous season’s hero colourway, stored in a closed drawer so daylight does not bleach it. When a new dye lot arrives for Fall we photograph it next to the prior swatch under the same lighting and flag any drift to the brand lead before the production run begins. That step saved one client a five-figure re-shoot when their Fall navy came back closer to royal blue than the Holiday navy six months earlier. Retouching uses one layered master per colourway, so the file the next colourist opens for Pre-Fall is the same reference Resort will inherit.
Workback calendar from sample arrival to launch email, week by week
A Spring 2027 drop landing in stores February 1 traces back through a calendar most brands underestimate by about three weeks. The workback we send new clients keeps the launch honest.
Week minus twelve: final SKU list signed, sample sizes and colourways in writing. Week minus ten: samples on the bench for steaming, repair and fit check. Week minus nine: model fittings and casting confirmed. Week minus eight: shoot block, three to five days for a hundred-SKU program. Week minus six: retouching first pass back for brand review. Week minus four: retouching approved, channel-managed exports cut. Week minus three: site uploads, line sheets compiled, email and paid built. Week minus one: soft launch to VIP list, edge cases caught.
Programs include early-Spring tees, Resort, and Fall outerwear, which carries the tightest window; see outerwear and jacket photography for fall and winter capsules. Booking inside the window means a triage conversation: first cut is lifestyle frames, then on-model for non-hero SKUs, then retouching depth on details.
What to send in a brief so quoting is fast
A clean brief turns a week of back-and-forth into a two-day quote. Send these in one email.
SKU list with garment name, colour, sample size, and which of the three image types each SKU needs. Reference shots from your own past seasons or from brands whose visual register you share, not aspirational pulls from labels with ten times your budget. A delivery schedule with channel breakdowns: how many for the site by which date, how many for wholesale by which date, how many for paid social. Brand guidelines for colour, background, and crop. Sample garments couriered in advance so the studio can pre-steam and tag before the shoot day.
Brand operations leads who run a tight brief get tight quotes back. The shoot day then runs on its run sheet and the launch holds its date. If you are scoping a season and want a quote that reflects the channels you actually publish to, the studio enquiry form takes the brief above and a target launch date.
Fabric drape and weight under Montreal studio LED versus strobe
Montreal studios split into two lighting camps: continuous LED panels favoured by fast-fashion DTC brands who want to see fabric behaviour live on tethered iPad previews, and strobe rigs preferred by wholesale-first labels that need higher shutter speeds to freeze steam-set silk or a falling knit hem. Silk, cupro and lightweight viscose read cleanest under diffused strobe because continuous LED can multiply flat-plane reflections on tightly-woven finishes. Denim, canvas and heavier wool behave the opposite way; LED continuous is kinder to weave detail because you can rake sidelight in and preview before exposure. Technical performance fabrics (softshell, ripstop, elastane blends) still trouble Montreal shoots because reflective mesh flares under bare-tube strobe until a silk scrim softens the source. Bring swatches and a lint roll to fittings so materials are pre-tested before shot day burns billable hours.
On-model versus flat lay: Quebec DTC and wholesale line-sheet approval
Quebec DTC shoppers scroll product grids on mobile and expect at least one on-model hero frame with a fit signal, a tuck at the waist or a rolled cuff. Line-sheet buyers reviewing a Montreal brand’s wholesale binder want the opposite, a controlled flat lay or ghost-mannequin frame that compares silhouette across a colour run without a model’s proportions confusing the read. When one SKU serves both channels, we shoot the ghost mannequin first for line-sheet approval, then bring the model in on the same steaming pass so fit reads identically across deliveries. If you have not booked talent before, the paperwork every Montreal apparel model expects is the line item brands under-budget most often, and the premium denim wash and weight brief gives a channel-by-channel breakdown.
Sample-size runs and per-SKU shot counts: pre-order versus in-stock reorders
Pre-order drops (a Montreal knit brand seeding a September capsule, say) usually ship one sample size per SKU and expect four to six frames each: ghost mannequin, flat lay, one on-model hero, one detail crop for stitch or trim. Recurring SS26 programs from Mile End and Griffintown labels ask for three to five images per SKU across a full size run so the site can rotate hero variants without reshoots when a sample-size photo would misrepresent XL fit. Outerwear collections benefit from the fuller size ladder because technical mid-layers and heavy shells behave very differently on XS mannequins versus 2XL bodies; scope shot count against size run before approving the quote.
Delivery formats: line-sheet PDFs, retail print and e-commerce ratios
Web deliveries in 2026 use a mixed ratio pack: 1:1 for grid tiles, 4:5 for product-detail gallery frames on mobile, 16:9 for lifestyle hero placements above the fold. Wholesale line-sheets and retail print catalogs still expect PDF-embedded 300 dpi imagery at defined bleed, and Montreal print houses in Ville Saint-Laurent and Rosemont typically want CMYK TIFF or high-quality JPEG rather than transparent PSD stacks. If your brand also runs hospitality or uniform programs, the chef coat and apron print catalog specs show what a print-first delivery pack looks like end to end.
Colour cards, Adobe RGB and dye-lot disclosure for US and EU shipping
Montreal brands shipping to US retailers usually deliver sRGB for e-commerce and Adobe RGB for print catalog inclusion, but the bigger risk is dye-lot drift between production runs. Physical Pantone colour cards on set, referenced at every lighting change, keep the file honest to what actually shipped. EU wholesale buyers frequently expect a dye-lot variance disclosure clause in the tech pack, and the shot pack should reflect the same tolerance so photography does not oversell a batch-dyed knit or naturally-tanned leather. Archive the master card with the shoot so a reshoot six months later locks back to the same reference.
Related Apparel & Fashion Guides
More category-specific apparel photography guides from our Montreal studio:
