How to use AI to optimize your product photography with Envato ImageEdit

Product photography eats up time you don’t have. Between shooting, removing backgrounds, fixing lighting, and resizing for different platforms, a simple product catalog can take days to complete. For eCommerce businesses, that delay directly impacts sales.

The good news? Learning how to use AI for product photography can handle the tedious editing work, freeing you to focus on creative decisions that actually differentiate your brand.

Today, we’re going to show you how to use AI for product photography to streamline your eCommerce image optimization. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through a speedy process for automated product photos and eCommerce, and by the end, you’ll learn:

• How to improve product imagery with AI
• How to remove backgrounds and objects automatically
• How to expand your images with newly generated content 
• How to generate similar imagery in seconds
• How to upscale imagery to make it of high quality 
• How to crop to the right size with ease 

This workflow is ideal for small business owners who need to compete without expensive studio setups, as well as for product photographers who want to eliminate repetitive editing tasks.

Envato ImageEdit (one of the best AI image editors) is a dream for this, especially with its Nano Banana integration — Google DeepMind’s Gemini-based image editing model — to deliver professional results with minimal effort (its capabilities are quite wild). 

The stronger your product imagery, the stronger both your sales conversion rates and trust. In a survey of online shoppers with Etsy, 90% of respondents stated that the quality of images is extremely important when deciding to buy, and can be the difference between whether someone adds an item to their cart or bounces. 

Automating your workflow with AI for product photography doesn’t just save time — it creates space for better brand storytelling, styling, lighting direction, and campaign creativity.

Let’s get started.

How to Use AI for Product Photography: Step-by-Step with Envato ImageEdit

1. Capture your product photos

Start with solid source material. AI enhances your images—it doesn’t fix fundamentally poor photography.

• Use controlled lighting: Set up a lightbox or mini-studio for consistent, crisp lighting across all shots
• Choose neutral backgrounds: White or light gray works best for AI processing
• Maintain consistent angles: Shoot front, side, and top views from the same distance and height
• Shoot high-resolution: Use the highest quality your camera offers and minimize compression to preserve detail for AI post-processing

2. Upload to Envato ImageEdit

• Log in to your Envato account and navigate to ImageEdit
• If you’re already an Envato subscriber, ImageEdit is included at no extra cost. New subscribers get access to ImageEdit, plus the entire Envato catalog and the entire suite of Envato AI generation tools
• Click Upload Image to begin

3. Apply AI Edits

Now for the magic. ImageEdit enables you to create automated product photos that would take significantly longer per image in traditional software.

Background removal: Strip away distracting backdrops or replace them with white, transparent, or branded colors.

Let’s change the background to a more neutral tone.

Object removal: Erase dust, price tags, hanging threads, or any unwanted elements.

Let’s remove tags, dust, and other unwanted elements from your product imagery. 

Lighting and exposure adjustment: Adjust shadows, boost clarity, and fine-tune brightness and contrast with intuitive slider controls.

See the difference when brightening the exposure by +30%.

Cropping and alignment: Change aspect ratios instantly for Instagram (1:1, 4:5), Shopify, Amazon, or other platforms.

Additional editing capabilities:

• Color correction and white balance: Match colors consistently across product batches
• Shadow and reflection generation: Ground floating products visually to add depth and realism
• Noise reduction and sharpening: Remove grain, smooth surfaces, or boost image clarity in seconds
• Perspective correction: Fix slightly off-angle shots to align horizontally or vertically — especially useful for packaging
• Upscale: Increase resolution without quality loss for large prints or high-resolution displays
• Generate similar: Create product variations in different colors or with new elements — learn more in our guide to getting the best results with Nano Banana

Nano Banana lets you update the color and other features almost instantly. For example, let’s instantly change this cup from yellow to red.

4. Expand Images with AI (Outpainting)

Outpainting lets you extend your canvas beyond the original frame — perfect for:

• Creating lifestyle compositions without reshooting
• Adding space for text overlays or design elements
• Repositioning products within the frame

Here’s how it works:

• Select the Expand tool
• Describe what you want in the new space: “extend the background,” “add a kitchen counter scene,” “create more negative space on the right”
• ImageEdit generates content that matches your product’s lighting, perspective, and style

Let’s give it a whirl with this (now rainbow!) cup.

Let’s adjust the composition and reposition it within the frame.

Magical stuff. Just make sure to review them in case any unusual issues arise, such as overcorrections, strange edges, or halos. 

For detailed prompting strategies, see our guide to crafting the perfect Nano Banana prompt.

5. Export for eCommerce

Once you’re happy with your edits, download your finished image:

• Click the Download button in the top-right corner
• ImageEdit exports as PNG format with transparent backgrounds preserved (if you removed the background)
• For platform-specific dimensions: Use the Crop tool before downloading to create the exact aspect ratios you need:
  • 1:1 for Shopify
  • 4:5 for Instagram
  • Custom sizes for Amazon, Etsy, or your website

Make sure you save consistent file names, and embed metadata if you need (and advised), like alt text, or SKU IDs. 

Upload and integrate into your eCommerce platform, whether it’s Etsy, Shopify, or another platform. Then go forth and make the dosh! 

Tips for AI eCommerce Product Photography 

• Just make sure to back up your originals before applying any edits, in case you want to revert to any original versions.
• Describe changes in deeper detail where possible. We’ve created a handy guide to Nano Banana for commercial work to get you started.

Why clean product images improve eCommerce conversion

High-quality product images directly impact sales, but file optimization matters just as much as visual quality.

What ImageEdit gives you:

Transparent backgrounds: PNG files with clean, transparent backgrounds let you place products on any background color or texture without messy white boxes — essential for consistent branding across platforms.

Optimized file quality: While ImageEdit exports PNG format, these files are already compressed efficiently. PNG preserves sharp edges and product details better than JPEG, which is why it’s the professional standard for product photography.

Consistent dimensions: Using the crop tool before export ensures every product image matches your platform’s requirements — no awkward stretching or weird crops that make products look unprofessional.

Optional: Take it further with WebP conversion

For even faster page loads, consider converting your PNG exports to WebP format using free online tools. WebP is Google’s modern image format that compresses 25-35% better than PNG with no visible loss of quality. This improves your Google Core Web Vitals scores, which directly impact search rankings.

Real-world impact of faster-loading images:

• Customers browse more products before bouncing
• Mobile users complete more checkouts
• Search engines rank your pages higher
• Lower bandwidth costs for high-traffic stores

The workflow: Edit in ImageEdit → Export PNG → Convert to WebP (optional) → Upload to your store.

More ImageEdit eCommerce tips 

Want to go deeper? Explore our other ImageEdit tutorials, which cover advanced techniques like prompting creative backgrounds and imagery, illustration prompting, and secret shortcuts to enhance your workflow.

Ready to build complete campaign assets? Browse Envato’s graphic templates for professional designs, or use Envato’s VideoGen to generate video content from your product images.