Generating Product Photos

Product Photography

Turn a product into commercial imagery via the image_generate tool. Marketplace listing galleries are out of scope. Anything whose subject isn't a product should not be created with this skill.

Workflow

Step 1: Read what you have

• A product image or URL is available → hand it to analyzing-products, and take four things back: what the product is; how a person physically uses it — sprayed, pumped, worn, etc.; which parts open or move, and in what order; and the details that have to stay identical wherever it appears.
• Look at the image before you describe it. Take the product only from what the image shows — not the brief, not the filename, not the product name. Run image_analysis and ask it for everything this shoot needs that the product facts leave out — how the surfaces take light, and whatever else the frame you end up building will have to describe.
• Product not supplied → don't guess at the product. It becomes the first thing Step 2 asks for.

Step 2: Interview

Skip this entirely when the brief already makes the shot obvious — a clear subject, a clear use, and nothing load-bearing missing. The interview exists to close real gaps, not to confirm what you were already told.

Otherwise ask once, bundled into a single message, at most four questions. Always leave a free-text way out so the user can answer off-menu. Anything this skill already settles is not a question.

Do ask, when the answer is genuinely missing:

When the user waives questions and the product is already in hand, go straight to generating. Take studio, since that is where an unrouted request lands anyway; take the tool's default ratio. Say in a sentence which settings you took, then keep going. It is a statement, not a checkpoint.

A missing product image is the one thing still worth raising.

Step 3: Select the mode and read the corresponding reference file

Route on what the image is for, not on a matched word.

Where two rows both fit, these win:

• A person in frame → on-model, whatever the setting or the crop would otherwise say.
• Text drawn onto the image → infographic, whatever else is in frame.
• One plane, shot from overhead → flat-lay
• One property at close range → close-up, even inside a setting.
• The occasion is the sell → seasonal
• The brief asks for something unexpected, surprising or scroll-stopping → creative, even when it also names a placement.

Step 4: Write the product description

You read the mode guide in Step 3, so you know what this shot has to show. Write one description of the product, and reuse it unchanged in every prompt you send.

How much to write depends on whether a photo is going with the call. With a reference attached, the photo carries identity and the description covers only what it cannot: the angle you want, the state the moving parts are in, the action being performed. With no reference, the description is all the model has, so it carries the product in full from the list below.

• Form — shape, proportion, how it sits or stands, or whatever else pins the silhouette down.
• Closure and moving parts — a cap, a hinge, a zip, whatever this product has, and whether the shot wants it open or shut.
• Materials and finish, surface by surface — matte or gloss, brushed, woven, translucent or something else.
• The action, wherever the frame has one — the specific thing being done to the product, taken from the mechanic Step 1 established rather than invented to suit the composition. Write it as the physical movement it is, and say what the product is doing at that instant: what has left it, what is about to, which part has moved, etc.

The mode guide decides how much of this the prompt carries — the whole product for some, a single property for a close crop, one description per item where several share the frame.

Don't transcribe what the label says. Spelling out the printing invites the model to redraw it, and redrawn text comes back warped.

Step 5: Select the model

If the user has explicitly named a model, then use that first.

Step 6: Write the prompt

• Follow the mode guide from Step 3 to write the prompts, carrying the product description from Step 4 into each one.
• Read references/photographic-craft.md before writing. It carries the language for light, shadow, colour, material and optics; the style anchor to pick before the first sentence; and the two fixed blocks that close every prompt.
• Every prompt is assembled in this order: the mode's fixed preservation block, then the scene you write from the mode's fields, then the quality-marker line, then the Avoid block — the last two exactly as references/photographic-craft.md gives them.
• Every prompt sent with a reference photo states the fidelity requirement. The attached photo does not enforce itself: say outright that the product in frame is the one in the reference and reaches the image unchanged. Anything the photo already settles and does not need to change must not be written out again: a detail spelled out reads as an instruction to draw it, and what gets drawn drifts from the photo. Those words go to what the reference cannot show — the setting, the light, the framing, etc.
• Where a call carries more than one reference image, label them. Refer to them as Image 1, Image 2 and so on, in the order they are passed. Say what each one is, then use those numbers in the instruction rather than describing the pictures again. Left unlabelled, the model picks its own subject from the set.
• Scene-specific exclusions go inline, phrased as the thing you want instead — there is no negative-prompt parameter. The closing Avoid block is the one exception, and it is fixed: do not add this frame's own exclusions to it.
• Don't reserve empty space for text nobody asked for. A region requested as emptiness comes back as an untextured block.
• A name is not a description. Borrowing someone's name — whoever or whatever it belongs to — buys a vague imitation at best, and some models simply decline the request. Say what you were reaching for instead: the geometry, the palette, how the light behaves. A rival's name has no place in the frame at all, not even as the thing you are steering away from. The only brand name that belongs in a prompt is one for the product you are photographing.
• No internal name goes in the prompt — not a mode, not a file.

Step 7: Generate

Call image_generate with a requests list (one object per image):

• Per object: prompt; model; aspect_ratio; resolution; reference_images.
• The product photo goes in reference_images every time. It holds identity; the prompt alone will not.
• Take the ratio from the user. If they haven't named one, derive it from where the image runs — the destination decides the crop, not the mode. If neither is known, ask in Step 2 or take the tool's default and say which you took.
• One image per request. Generate a single frame unless the brief asked for more than one. Never generate a second to compare models, to try a different look, or to correct an output you judged poor — every one of those bills again. Where the brief does ask for several, send them as several request objects in the one call.
• Don't run a vision or analysis call on the image you just generated. Judging your own output is not part of this workflow: it costs another call, and anything it finds you are not permitted to act on. Hand the result to the user and let them decide.
• An unanswered question is not a yes. If you ask whether to regenerate and no answer comes back, the answer is no — deliver what you have and say what you would have changed. A run with nobody watching cannot consent to being billed twice.
• Call list_image_models for accepted aspect_ratio values, resolution tiers and per-model reference_images limits rather than guessing — a wrong enum fails a billed call.

Images are polled for you, but a heavy one can come back as {status: "pending", …}. That is a job handle, not a failure. Pass that exact handle to job_status to retrieve the finished image, and if it comes back pending again, call job_status again with the same handle. Never re-run a pending image through image_generate: that abandons the job you are already paying for and starts a second, separately billed one.

Step 8: Return

• Share the image URLs and local file paths, once every frame has finished — never a partial set.
• For a set, present them in the order you outlined.

Producing a set of images

Requests generate independently, so build the continuity in:

1. Draft the frame list and get it agreed before generating anything. Every frame is billed separately, so misreading the brief means paying to generate the entire set a second time.
2. Fix one look and write it into every prompt unchanged — the palette, the surface, the light, the camera height and angle, whatever else the look is made of. Rephrasing it between frames reads as a new instruction.
3. Send the same reference image and the same model on every frame. Those two carry the product and hold the set together; wording alone will not.
4. Vary only what each frame shows. A frame that needs a different setting is a second set, not a member of this one.
5. Make them genuinely different — near-duplicates test nothing. Give each frame its own argument first and let that pick the staging; frames differing only in camera angle ask the same question twice.
6. Where the set is a sequence rather than a spread, decide the order first and write each frame to its position: what has to stop someone, what carries the middle, what the last frame leaves them holding. A sequence assembled from interchangeable frames reads as a spread that lost its order.

Common mistakes

• Writing a freeform prompt instead of what the mode says it must carry.
• Skipping the interview when something load-bearing is missing.
• Showing an interaction the product doesn't support, when Step 1 already established what it does.
• Naming a brand, a photographer or a publication in the prompt in place of describing the look.
• Re-running a rejected frame without first finding out what was wrong with it.

Edge cases

• The image came back not as intended — wrong angle, warped label, a look you didn't ask for → deliver it anyway and say what you think is off. Do not regenerate on your own judgement: a second generation bills again, and the user may be happy with the first.
• A rejection that names no reason → ask what missed before re-running, with options drawn from the mode you just shot, plus free text. A blind re-run bills again and lands elsewhere at random.
• Safety or policy rejection → name a workable stand-in and resubmit; on a second, try seedream-5; on a third, say which element is blocked rather than retrying blind.
• Generic failure → read the error. If it names a parameter or limit, fix that and resubmit; otherwise resubmit once, then hand the user the error text.
• reference_images rejected on count → the error states the limit; drop to it.
• error: "no_provider_configured" → relay the tool's hint (the user must set their key).

Reference

Mode guides — read the one you routed to; each ends with a checklist to read your prompt against:

• references/mode-studio.md — the background and its brightness, true colour, sharpness, shadow.
• references/mode-lifestyle.md — place, hour, motivated light, and what keeps the product the subject.
• references/mode-hero.md — the open side for copy, the graded key, surviving every delivery crop.
• references/mode-on-model.md — casting, styling condition, hands, where the crop cuts the body.
• references/mode-close-up.md — the one property, raking light, apparent source size, the scale cue.
• references/mode-flat-lay.md — camera plane, arrangement register, the open surface.
• references/mode-seasonal.md — the single carrier, whose palette it is, props that read as included.
• references/mode-infographic.md — callout copy, anchors, leader lines, the exposing angle.
• references/mode-creative.md — the concept, the one departure, coloured sources, what is held dark.
• references/mode-floating.md — the underside, the displaced shadow, the gap that reads as height.

Shared craft — read on every job:

• references/photographic-craft.md — the two fixed blocks that close every prompt; the style anchor; light, shadow, colour, material, optics and on-image text; what changes for paid media.