How to photograph a mirror to sell without being in it

A mirror is the product nobody can photograph the obvious way. Point a camera straight at one and the picture is of the camera, the person holding it and half the room behind them. Sellers get around it with a crop, a bad angle or a photo taken so far back that the mirror is a small shape in a large bedroom. This guide is about the cleaner version: a setup that keeps you out of the glass, and a cutout afterwards that removes the room around the frame. For the general home setup of window light, a card background and phone settings, how to take product photos at home comes first, and this page picks up where a mirror breaks its rules.

One thing to settle at the start, because it decides how you shoot. A cutout removes what is around the mirror. It does not remove what is in it. The glass is part of the product, so a reflection of you, the window or the wardrobe stays inside the outline however good the edge is. Everything in the first half of this page is about making the reflection harmless before the shutter, and the second half is about the part the cutout is good at, which is the room.

Why a mirror breaks the usual advice

Most products are opaque. They have a surface that shows the product and nothing else, so you point the camera and the product is what you get. A mirror has a surface that shows whatever is opposite it, which means the photograph contains two scenes: the mirror and its frame, and the room reflected in the glass.

That is why the usual advice goes wrong in three ways.

• Facing it square on puts the camera in the picture. The reflection of the lens and the person holding it sits in the middle of the glass.
• A window behind you becomes a bright rectangle in the glass. Window light is the right light for product photos, but a window that faces the mirror is reflected in it, and a pale blown-out panel in the middle of the glass looks like a flaw in the mirror.
• A cluttered room reads as part of the mirror. A buyer looking at a thumbnail cannot tell which shapes are the frame and which are the bedroom behind the camera.

The angle that keeps you out of it

A mirror reflects at the same angle it is hit. A camera standing square in front of the glass sees itself; a camera standing to one side sees whatever is on the other side of the room, mirrored. That gives the whole trick: stand off the centre line and turn the phone a little across the glass.

1. Lean the mirror on a plain wall. Pick the plainest wall in the house, with no pictures, no shelves and no door. Clear the floor in front of it. Lean the mirror rather than hanging it, so you can move it a few degrees if the reflection is wrong.
2. Move to one side. Start with the phone about a metre to the left of the mirror’s centre and angle it to look across the glass. The further you go, the less of you the glass can show, and the more the mirror’s shape is foreshortened, so find the point where you are out of the glass and the frame is still a clear rectangle.
3. Look at what the glass is showing now. The reflection is of the wall on the other side of the room from you. Whatever is there is what the buyer sees inside the mirror.
4. Move the mirror a few degrees if there is something in the way. A small turn changes what it reflects far more than a large step by the camera does.

Take a test shot and look at it at full size on a laptop or a large phone screen, not the camera roll. A reflection that looks fine as a thumbnail is often a person-shaped smudge at full size.

What the glass should reflect

An angled shot gets you out of the glass, but it does not decide what is there instead. A reflection of a blank wall is the safest answer, and you can give yourself one even in a busy room.

• Hang a plain sheet. A bed sheet, a roll of paper or a large sheet of card, hung on the far wall or a clothes rail, out of frame of your photo but facing the glass. The mirror then reflects one calm tone.
• Pick a tone that reads as glass. A pure white reflection looks like a blank panel; a soft grey or a pale colour is easier to read as a surface that is showing something. Do not pick a colour that clashes with a frame.
• Keep the reflection even. A sheet hung with creases shows as stripes. Hang it flat, or use card.
• Keep bright things out of it. A lamp, a window, a shiny door handle and the white of a ceiling light are the shapes that draw the eye in a mirror.

Light that does not end up in the glass

The advice for other products is a window as the only light. For a mirror, the same window can ruin the picture, because it shines onto the glass as a reflection rather than lighting the frame.

Put the mirror at a right angle to the window rather than facing it, so the window lights the frame from the side and the glass reflects the wall opposite instead. If the room allows only one arrangement, close a sheer curtain, which turns the window from a sharp bright shape into a soft glow, or shoot on an overcast day when the whole sky is one even tone. Turn off the lamps, as with any product, so only one colour of light reaches the frame. Product photography setup covers the cheap upgrades, such as a fill card for a dark frame, that help here as much as anywhere.

Shoot the frame as well as the glass

A mirror sells on its frame. That is the part a buyer judges for style, material and condition, so give it a close photo of its own.

• A straight shot of the whole mirror, taken from the angle above. Keep the camera level with the middle of the mirror so the frame does not look tapered.
• A close-up of the corner, where the frame is joined and where wear shows first.
• A close-up of the back, where the fixings, a wire or a label are.
• The mirror in use, if it helps the sale: hung on a wall with the angle so the glass shows a plain room. A buyer wants to picture scale, and a room shot does that better than a measurement.

Measure the mirror and put the figures in the listing text. A photo cannot show scale, and an oversized mirror is the usual reason for a return.

The cutout: removing the room

Once the reflection is under control, the cutout does the job it is good at. The mirror is a clear shape with a defined outline, and the room around it, the wall, the floor and the skirting board, is what you want gone.

Three places to look in the compare view.

1. The edge of the glass. On a thin frame or a frameless mirror the edge is a pale line between the reflection and the wall. If the outline sits a pixel or two inside, Edge shift grows it; if a thread of the old wall clings to it, shrink it and add a little Feather. A fringe on a mirror is the same problem described in white halos around a cutout.
2. A frame the same tone as the wall. A white frame on a white wall has almost no edge. Shoot against a wall of a different tone from the frame, and the cutout has something to follow.
3. The glass itself. If the reflection is close in tone to the wall around the frame, the tool may treat part of the glass as background and cut a hole in it. Paint it back with the brush, which works at the picture’s own resolution and can be undone stroke by stroke.

Leave the edge soft. A bevel or a thin frame is a gradient in a photograph, and getPNG keeps that softness rather than cutting it hard, so do not sharpen it back.

Shadow and scale on the white

A mirror cut out and put on pure white floats. A mirror is also large, and a flat floating shape gives a buyer no sense of its weight. A soft drop shadow built from the cutout’s outline, set low and close, makes it look as if it is leaning on something. It is optional, and on a marketplace that wants a pure white main image it should be faint or left out. Product photos on a white background covers the rules the main marketplaces share, and Etsy product photos covers that marketplace’s own.

What usually goes wrong

• A person-shaped smudge in the glass, from shooting square on. Move to one side.
• A bright rectangle in the mirror, which is the window. Turn the mirror so it no longer faces the window.
• A bedroom visible in the mirror, because the wall opposite was never cleared. Hang a sheet.
• A hole cut into the glass, because the reflection matched the wall. Paint it back with the brush.
• A frame that disappears, because it is the same tone as the wall. Change the wall.
• A mirror that looks tiny, because there was nothing to show scale. Put the size in the text.

None of this needs a studio. It needs a plain wall, a step to one side, a sheet and a cutout that removes the room. The reflection is the part that has to be right in the camera, because it is the one thing a cutout cannot decide for you.

The steps, in short

1. Lean the mirror against a plain wall. Clear the floor and the wall around it, and make sure nothing bright or patterned faces the glass. Whatever stands opposite the mirror is what the mirror will show.
2. Stand to one side, not in front. Move left or right of the mirror's centre line and angle the phone a little across the glass, so the reflection is of the wall beside you rather than of the camera.
3. Give the glass something plain to reflect. Hang a plain sheet or a sheet of card out of frame, opposite the glass, so the mirror shows one calm tone instead of the room.
4. Keep the window out of the glass. Light the mirror from the side with the window, so the window itself is not a bright rectangle in the reflection.
5. Cut the room away. Drop the photo into the background remover, check the frame edge and the glass edge in the compare view, and put the mirror on white or keep it transparent.

Questions

How do I take a picture of a mirror without being in it?

Stop facing it square on. A mirror reflects whatever is opposite, so a camera pointed straight at the glass records the camera. Stand to one side and shoot at a slight angle across the glass, so the reflection is of a blank wall or a hung sheet beside you. The more the glass is turned from square, the less of you it can show.

Can a background remover take me out of the mirror?

Not reliably, and it is not what the tool is for. A cutout separates the mirror from the room around it. The glass is part of the mirror, so whatever it reflects stays inside the outline. Avoid the reflection when you shoot, or paint it over afterwards in an editor, rather than expecting the cutout to know the difference between glass and a picture of you.

Should the mirror reflect something, or should the glass be blank?

A calm, plain reflection reads best: a wall of one tone, or a sheet. A buyer wants to see the glass is clear and the frame is straight, and a busy reflection hides both. A reflection that is entirely white can look like a blank panel, so a soft grey or a pale colour is easier to read as glass.

Is a straight-on shot ever worth it?

For a mirror with no frame detail to show, a straight-on view is the clearest shape, but only if nothing is in the way. You can take it from far enough back, zoomed in by moving rather than by digital zoom, with the glass reflecting a plain hung sheet that has a small gap for the lens. If that sounds like more setup than the sale is worth, the angled shot is the practical one.

Why does the edge of the glass look wrong after I cut the mirror out?

Where the frame is thin or the glass is bevelled, the edge is a pale, half-transparent line that is easy to lose or to over-keep. Check it in the compare view, grow or shrink the outline with Edge shift, and use Clean edge colour if a rim of the old wall clings to it. A fringe on a mirror is the same problem as on any product.

Do I need a cutout for a mirror at all?

Not always. If the mirror is photographed against a clean wall that does not need replacing, the photo can go up as it is. The cutout earns its place when the room behind the mirror is distracting, when a marketplace asks for a plain background, or when you want one consistent look across several listings.