The shot list is the catalogue standard
Shoppers compare products side by side, so a catalogue has to behave like one set. Write the standard down per range: the angles (front, three-quarter, back, detail, in-hand for scale), camera height, margin around the product, light direction and shadow type. A long-lens look without wide-angle distortion keeps proportions honest. Decide whether the range uses soft drop shadows, hard cast shadows or none, and hold that across every SKU. Generation makes another angle cheap; it does not make it cheap to fix a thousand images produced to five slightly different standards. The standard is the brief, and every output is checked against it.
Why the real product has to be locked
Image generators redraw what they are shown. Left alone, they soften label text into lookalike letters, nudge a logo, add a button, round a corner or shift a colourway towards whatever they have seen most often. On a campaign image that is embarrassing; on a product detail page it misdescribes the goods. The dependable method starts from real pixels, a photograph, CAD render or 3D scan of the actual product, composited into generated light and surroundings rather than redrawn. Check every output against the reference at full resolution, paying most attention to small print, ingredient panels, sizes and marks such as CE or recycling symbols.
What marketplaces demand of main images
Amazon's main-image rules are the strictest most brands meet: a pure white background (RGB 255, 255, 255), the product filling 85% of the image, and no props that are not included, promotional claims or Amazon badges. The main image must be a realistic, professional-quality image that shows the product's real scale, quantity and colour, never a placeholder, and 1,000 pixels or more on the longest side enables zoom. Google Merchant Center rejects promotional overlays and watermarks, and asks merchants to keep the embedded metadata that marks an image as AI-generated. Lifestyle scenes, infographics and scale shots belong in the secondary images, where the rules are looser.
Retouch standards, applied to the whole range
Write retouching rules as tightly as the shot list: remove dust, fingerprints and packaging creases; straighten labels; match colour to the physical sample under controlled light. Never remove seams, stitching or features the customer will receive, and never change size, finish or texture. Then apply the rules to the range in one pass rather than image by image. In Synthetic White, products are saved as elements under product-lock, so geometry, labels and colours stay pixel-accurate while scenes change, and batches can run straight from a PIM or product feed. Approvals cover the batch, with an audit trail and a record of which model made each image.
Updated 25 September 2026