Roughly 75% of consumers rely on product images when purchasing a product online. Moreover, over half of online shoppers believe pictures are more important than product descriptions.
These statistics indicate that key metrics like the Click-Through Rate or Conversion Rate directly depend on the quality of the images sellers on vast digital marketplaces add to product listings.
However, taking professional product photos gets more expensive with each item you add to your eBay store. Even if you opt for a DIY approach and decide to economize by not hiring a professional photographer, taking pictures of thousands of products requires an immense amount of effort and time.
AI product photo tools seem to provide an easy solution to this issue. Still, the question remains whether sellers on online marketplaces can use them to automate the visual content creation process.
Read on to learn more about AI photo tools and whether they can help improve the performance of your product listings on eBay.
eBay’s product photography rules
Knowing the platform’s image guidelines is essential when creating product pictures for your listings. However, these guidelines vary slightly on eBay, Amazon, and other online marketplaces.
For instance, the minimum size of the picture on Amazon and eBay is 500px on the longest side, but Amazon favors sellers that use images with 1600px or larger on the longest side.
Unlike social media platforms, online marketplaces require sellers to use main images that clearly depict a product on a white background. At the same time, eBay provides more flexibility with secondary images than Amazon by allowing sellers to add watermarks to specific parts of the image and use image sets for product variations.
Product positioning within the main image is also essential on both platforms. The depicted product should be centrally positioned and occupy around 85% of the frame to ensure optimal visibility of the item’s features.
In addition, the main product image should only have natural-looking soft shadows rather than hard shadows that can distract the viewer.
A product’s colors should be accurate in all primary and secondary product images, which is why it is paramount to use appropriate color profiles in-camera and during the post-processing stage.
Product photography in the age of AI
Artificial intelligence is transforming the ecommerce world at a galloping rate because it allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks like writing product descriptions, managing inventory, or optimizing product listings for international markets.
AI tools have also made creating product images much easier and less expensive. They’re not yet powerful enough to create photos of unique products and all the labels or specific features they contain.
eBay sellers can’t entirely rely on AI to produce visual content for their online store because they must take the product’s initial picture before processing it with these tools.
However, AI photo tools remove the need to take pictures in professional studio setups because they can easily change the background, fix or change the lighting, or remove any imperfections.
Despite its capabilities, AI is still primarily used during the post-processing stage, as its features are still not powerful enough to replace professional product photos. So, most online sellers use AI tools to edit photos since creating pictures of unique items they offer in their stores is challenging.
The advantages and limitations of using Artificial Intelligence to generate product photos
The constant need for a high volume of professional-grade pictures presents a challenge for sellers on eBay and other digital marketplaces. AI tools offer an easy way to produce vast amounts of images at a relatively low cost and with next to no Photoshop skills.
Sellers don’t need any previous manual editing experience to change a product photo’s background, add items to a picture, or enhance colors.
On the other hand, the quality of the tool’s output largely depends on the prompt and the single image they use as a reference, so the results will often be underwhelming if you fail to create a prompt that tells the tool precisely how you want to alter the picture.
The images you upload to your eBay store must depict the item realistically, but controlling the color values of the objects in a picture you edit with an AI tool can be difficult and time-consuming.
As a result, you can easily end up with images you cannot use because they don’t depict the item realistically. The commercial use of AI-generated images is still a hot topic, and the rules surrounding it will likely keep evolving.
Currently, sellers can use AI-generated images in commercial contexts as long as they pay for the license to use the software.
The most effective AI product image generators
New AI tools are emerging rapidly, providing digital retailers with a variety of image post-processing options.
Claid.ai, Adobe Firefly, and Magic Studio’s Product Photos are among the most versatile AI-powered photo editors on the market. Each tool grants users access to a wide range of features to create high-quality product pictures effortlessly.
Here’s a quick overview of the features each of these tools offers:
- Background generation and removal
- Text-to-image generation
- A selection of templates
- Bulk image processing
- Photo editing kit
Creating product pictures with these tools requires at least a basic familiarity with the photo editing process in order to remove backgrounds, position products correctly, or get your brand colors right.
Moreover, it is vital to have the patience to tweak the prompt and generate multiple variants of a product picture with AI-generated backgrounds, as the tools don’t always create pictures suitable for commercial use from the first try.
Their cost ranges from $5 to over $50 per month or more, depending on how many images a user produces. Consequently, digital retailers have to make a financial commitment to produce images in vast quantities with these tools.
Can sellers on eBay benefit from AI product photo tools?
Generating images with an AI product image generator for a listing on eBay isn’t always straightforward. eBay’s image guidelines dictate how the images should look, and getting the AI image editor to follow those guidelines is often easier said than done.
Furthermore, sellers need at least one reference image of the product to create multiple image variants with an AI tool. As a result, digital retailers cannot avoid taking pictures of the products, either new or used, they want to add to their eBay stores.
AI-powered photo editors are an excellent supplement that enables eBay sellers to streamline the visual content creation process.
As such, they’re a valuable resource that helps merchants save time on photo processing and create professional product photos that grab shoppers’ attention.
Even so, AI product photography tools cannot replace the initial step of taking a photo, although they reduce the need to photograph products in photo studio conditions.
It’s important to remember that using these tools to alter a product in any way is against eBay’s policies, so sellers must make an extra effort to ensure that their AI-enhanced images depict the product accurately.
Hence, only light editing operations, like softening the shadows, removing objects, or tweaking the brightness and contrast, are recommended. Other more invasive image editing techniques can alter a product’s color, shape, or current state, which renders the picture unusable on eBay.
The future of AI product photography in ecommerce
Image quality is a key factor determining the product listing’s performance.
Aside from having a huge impact on the listing’s click-through rates, pictures are also instrumental for eBay sellers operating on European markets trying to meet the GPSR compliance requirements.
AI tools offer a simple way to streamline visual content creation, saving sellers time and effort while ensuring a professional presentation.
Following eBay’s picture policies is crucial for sellers trying to stay competitive in their niche, but they may struggle to create AI-enhanced images that meet the platform’s stringent guidelines if they choose to rely solely on these tools to create visual content for their store.
The regulations regarding the commercial use of AI-generated images are evolving, and they’re likely to become stricter in the future.
So, eBay sellers should closely monitor the latest developments to understand how to best benefit from AI image generators and editors in the long run.
About Webinterpret
Webinterpret supports merchants selling on eBay.
Our AI-based solutions enable more effective selling through automated listing localization, advertising, and returns and ensure all products placed on EU markets are GPSR-compliant.
By giving your international customers a full, end-to-end local shopping experience, Webinterpret improves your conversion and helps establish your business globally.
