Honestly, can text-to-image APIs for product shots actually replace some studio photography?

Lately my shop’s been dropping new items fast, and booking a photographer takes a whole week. Couldn’t take it anymore, so I tried using a text-to-image API to generate white-background product shots. For prompts like “white sneakers in a clean studio background,” it’s fast—a few seconds per image, super convenient for bulk generation.

But honestly, what it can replace is mainly the background and atmosphere. The shoe shape, logo, stitching details on the main image still need real shooting or retouching—AI blurs them and it looks fake, returns would go up. My current workflow is: shoot the product itself, then use AI to add scenes and seasonal vibes—like swapping the same pair of sneakers between a summer beach and a winter fireplace, generating a dozen atmospheric shots at once for the detail pages.

Click-through rates have actually gone up. Wondering if anyone here sells AI-generated images directly as main product shots, and whether the platform flags that as a violation.

Sure, you can use AI for the background, but if you start messing around with the main image, the risk control will catch up with you sooner or later.

Fellow shoe designer here, AI really can’t figure out stitching details.

That “atmosphere image” idea is pretty solid, mind sharing the click-through data?

Our family account got flagged for “image-text mismatch” straight up, so be careful out there.

Saved on the photography scheduling, but the retouching costs? Not a single cent less.

Same here, making shoes—AI really can’t handle stitch lines and threading. Zoom in and it falls apart immediately.