How to use the Shopify AI image editing capabilities

Discover how Shopify’s native AI image editor let merchants enhance product photos, swap backgrounds, and adjust lighting.

Image editing inside Shopify

One of the biggest pains for merchants is editing product photos. You often find yourself needing to do background removal, cropping, resizing and more. In the past, this required a third-party tool like Photoshop to handle the heavy lifting. What if we told you those days are over. Shopify’s native AI image editor is an attempt to consolidate that workflow. You can stay inside the Shopify platform and make meaningful edits or AI transformations.

The image editor is tailored for Shopify merchant’s needs and anticipates the most common features. It’s not trying to replicate a full version of Photoshop but rather trying to solve the real problems you face daily with your product images.

Let’s take a deeper look at the Shopify image editing capabilities and see how it stacks up for your real world needs. And don’t forget to check out our tutorial video on using the features.

What can you do with it?

Let’s be honest, this is not going to be as powerful as Photoshop. The native Shopify editor however supports the most critical tasks like cropping, rotating, resizing, annotating and basic transformations. But layered on top of that is some Shopify Magic that brings AI into the mix. You can now incorporate image changes or scene updates to create all new images.

One of these AI features is “Color Background.” Shopify uses AI to detect the subject, mask the background and replace it with a solid color of your choosing. This is a great way to create clean product shots across the site. You can use the AI to place all items on a white background and then use those as the main product image. This gives your site a professional, curated look.

The most exciting feature is the AI “Generate” prompt. This lets you transform your product photos using a normal text prompt. You can enter text like, “place this mug on a marble table in a kitchen” and have Shopify reimagine the picture for you. This is a great way to create supplementary images to help contextualize your existing products.

It’s worth noting that the AI generation doesn’t work for extremely high-res, large-format images. It does work great however for most e-commerce and web store needs.

Having this native capability at your fingertips isn’t just about zany AI prompts, it brings real practical advantages too. You now have a tool that saves cost and increases efficiency.

The risk of overdoing AI

As compelling as these AI tools are, they carry a subtle risk of altering a product’s visual presentation so much that it no longer reflects reality. Over-editing and using “too much” AI can introduce fake texture, color, or scale of the actual item. You need to be careful to not mislead customers and erode trust. Use it to refine things like lighting and mood and not to rewrite reality. Avoid transformations that risk creating a visual “fantasy” version of something your customers didn’t actually order.

This is more than hypothetical. Merchants and buyers have voiced wariness about “too much AI.” On forums like Reddit commenters have posted things like:

“I refuse to buy anything that uses AI for stock photos … what I got wasn’t really what was pictured.” 

“The client is outraged because the real product looks nothing like the AI images.”

These posts underscore the truth that customers may tolerate a little “beautification,” but they won’t accept deception. If you push AI too far, you may start seeing high return rates, negative reviews or a loss of customers.

You should use AI editing with discipline and always compare the outputs against the real product. Your goal should be to enhance and not mislead. When in doubt, leave some “raw” or minimally edited images visible so people see what they’re really getting. Your motto should be to “use it, but don’t abuse it.”

Start using it 

Shopify’s native image editor represents a shift in how you handle your product workflow. For years you had to juggle multiple tools, export and reimport images or rely on external apps. Shopify has taken a big step toward simplifying that. Now everything is inside your Shopify admin, you can crop, resize, clean up backgrounds and use AI to enhance your images. You can fine-tune product photos, build visual consistency and generate scene variations. 

Shopify’s ongoing investment in native editing tools means you can expect continuous improvements. This evolution is about empowering you to stay productive inside the platform you already trust. When you can handle everything in one place, your workflow becomes more efficient. So get started on a stronger brand presentation and a Shopify experience that feels unified from start to finish.

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