CREATIVE GENERATIVE AI
Learn how to capture audience attention using product photography with AI-generated backgrounds.
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How AI-generated backgrounds can help you to boost your brand
How generative AI can help you to create product photo backgrounds
A step-by-step guide to creating AI generated product backgrounds
Tips for getting the most out of generative AI product backgrounds
Whether you’re finally opening an online store to sell your ceramic mugs or promoting a new line of home accessories for a small company with a lean marketing budget — you’re going to need quality product photos. Consumers are constantly distracted by a steady stream of advertising on websites, social feeds, in magazines and beyond. Quickly snagging someone’s attention with a fantastic image is one of the most important ways you can open a conversation with your audience.
Thanks to tools like Adobe Firefly generative AI, creating eye-catching and professional-looking product images doesn’t require a big budget or a photography studio.
Using AI generated backgrounds for product photography enables you to create polished and engaging imagery that broadcasts your brand’s personality. AI backgrounds are images created with generative AI and paired with actual product photos to create a complete tableau — from stylish flat lays to breezy ocean scenes, energetic water effects and more.
If you can dream up the scene you want to create, you can use simple text prompts to craft compelling product backgrounds without needing pro lights, props or cameras.
Your product has a personality — and so should your product photos. A line of soothing bath salts may look best on a sleek, modern bathroom counter. The natural goodness of an organic pet food can be expressed by nestling it in a sunny meadow. Colourful hair barrettes beloved by customers who enjoy going to festivals may resonate best in an on-trend photo style, such as displayed on a brightly coloured cylinder with a few quirky props strewn around.
If you’re running a side hustle or small business, producing images like this may feel out of reach — a potentially expensive and time-consuming nice-to-have. Even if you work at a multinational corporation, you never know when your marketing budget will get reduced and you’ll need to invent new ways to show off products. But establishing a brand persona for your product and carrying that message through its visual presence is an important way to connect with your customer and communicate key messages about your product. Is your product fun? Serious? Upscale? Casual? All of those are things that can be communicated through graphic design choices — and a strong foundation for your product photos is a necessity.
It’s up to you, the person using the generative AI tool — like the Adobe Firefly text to image generator or Generative Fill — to write a prompt that will ask it to create a specific type of background photo, like a pink marble countertop or a busy city street. Once the prompt is written and submitted to the generator, it takes in all the words and weighs them for importance, then uses them to gather the appropriate data to assemble an image that reflects the description. The tech does all the behind-the-scenes work in a matter of moments, leaving you with relevant images that might just be your new product photo background.
The results can be surprising — sometimes you’ll get an output that closely resembles what you imagined. Sometimes it won’t look anything like what you expected — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the useful things about AI is how it can help jumpstart the creative process by offering interesting examples that are different from how you might have created them and inspire you to explore a new direction.
Just as the generative AI is constantly refining its abilities to create images that are accurate to the prompt, you should keep playing with and refining the way you write your descriptions. If you want to generate an “atmospheric smoke effect,” for example, try words like fog and mist as well. Learn more about how to write AI art prompts.
Once your find your rhythm with AI tools and product photography, they will not only enable you to explore and play with applying different styles to your product photos but allow you to quickly create new content for social feeds, event flyers and beyond.
Think of generative AI as a creative assistant who helps you power through the administrative parts of product photography so you can focus on creating customised artwork that compliments your brand.
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Open your product image in the Adobe Firefly Generative Fill module. Click Background and remove the background.
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To isolate your product, Select Subject, copy and paste it into a new file created in your chosen size and position it on the canvas where you want it to appear. Click Select Subject in the Contextual Task Bar and then click the Invert selection icon to select the background.
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To add elements to your image in Firefly, click Insert and then paint in the area where you want the new object to appear. It doesn’t have to be precise — just create a loose approximation of the shape where you want it to appear. For instance, if you want to place a red ribbon on top of the wooden tabletop, paint a curvy line across it. Then type “red ribbon” into the prompt field and click Generate. Follow the same steps as above to refine your result.
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In Photoshop, use any selection tool to select the area where you want your additions to appear. Say you’re marketing a new face lotion and your prompt was “object on top of a pool of water with rose petals floating in the water.” You’d like to have a few rose petals falling through the air, too. Select an area, type in “rose petals falling” and click Generate. When you perform edits with Generative Fill, those edits are created on their own generative layer, meaning you can adjust or remove them without affecting the rest of your design.
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Perhaps you’ve displayed your product against a blue sky filled with clouds (“object nestled in a grassy meadow with a blue sky filled with clouds”) and love the result, but there are a few more clouds than you’d like. In Firefly, click Remove and paint over the clouds you want to get rid of, then click Generate to view options of your image without it. Keep adding, removing and refining your prompts to get the best possible AI background for your product photo.
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Use any selection tool in Photoshop to select elements of your image that you wish to remove — perhaps a few too many flower petals have been generated and you’d like to remove some of them. Once you’ve selected a petal or two, simply click Generate in the contextual task bar, leaving the prompt field blank. The object will be removed and filled in with new content that blends in with the surrounding image.
Try using terms like “in front of a busy cityscape,” “on top of a white stucco wall,” “floating in a galaxy filled with stars” and other words to describe how the object relates to its surroundings. For instance, to create a flat lay use a description like “Object on top of a bright green surface, overhead view.”
The Remove function isn’t just for getting rid of large elements — use it to erase any pesky artefacts that mar your product image, like a tiny bit of shadow left over from the original photograph or any dark edges. You can do the same in Photoshop using Generate without a prompt.
Examine product images and try to recreate the effects using AI prompts. This is a good way to get the hang of describing things accurately and specifically and learn what kinds of prompts generate results that closely resemble the words used.
Many product photos are heavily dependant on surfaces — the place the object sits on and in front of. Use words like marble, plastic and metal to generate backgrounds and objects with the desired texture.
