The B2C marketer’s guide to AI photo editing

High-quality product photography can be a major factor in driving ecommerce sales. It tells your brand’s story, reinforces brand consistency, and influences conversion through every step of the customer lifecycle. In fact, according to Etsy, 9 in 10 shoppers see image quality as the top factor when deciding to buy.

The challenge is scale. Producing high-quality visuals for every season, audience, and channel is costly and time-consuming. Snapper reports that a single shoot can run upwards of $2,000, or $15–$300 per product—and that doesn’t include edits, reshoots, or variations.

AI photo editing offers a faster, more flexible way forward. With the right tools, you can adapt a single image into dozens of variations in minutes by swapping backgrounds, adjusting colors, or removing distractions.

Here’s a practical guide to get the most out of your AI photo editor and start creating personalized, conversion-ready assets—without breaking your process.

1. Create (or update) your brand photography guidelines

Strong photography guidelines keep every image consistent and recognizable. According to Marq’s Brand Consistency Report, 68% of professionals say consistent branding has led to more than 10% revenue growth. Your visuals should reflect what your customers value and expect.

If you don’t have brand guidelines yet, start a living document that evolves with your company and includes photography-specific brand guidelines. At a minimum, cover:

• Colors: Define your exact color palette (with HEX codes). Decide whether product shots should highlight one signature color or incorporate a full palette.
• Styling: Clarify whether images should lean minimalist (e.g., clean studio backdrops) or maximalist (e.g., layered with props and context).
• Mood: Set the emotional tone (e.g., bright, professional, playful, energetic, aspirational).
• Lighting: Note whether you favor strong lighting, soft shadows, or natural tones.
• Backgrounds: Decide if backgrounds should stay simple and plain (and if so, which colors), or reflect real-life contexts like cafés, gyms, or outdoor spaces.
• Design elements: Mention how to use outlines, shapes, or logos within imagery.
• Types of photography: Specify what type of photography is needed for each channel (e.g., plain product shots for social media vs. lifestyle imagery for launches).
• Fonts and text (if any): If you’ll overlay text on top of images (e.g., for ads, banners, etc.), specify approved brand fonts and usage rules.

Looking for inspiration as you build out your brand guidelines? Scroll through some brand guidelines presentations on Behance to see what other design teams have come up with.

2. Build a library of high-quality, on-brand photography and product visuals

AI performs best when you feed it strong source material. Curate your best product and lifestyle shots, whether from new shoots, existing brand assets, or licensed stock images (with rights to edit). This way, your outputs will be sharper and more on-brand.

Major stock image sites where you can browse and source royalty-free, on-brand images include iStock, Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, Shutterstock, and Freepik.

Organize your library in a way that makes sense for your team, like by:

• Product (e.g., a folder for each SKU)
• Theme or season (e.g., summer, holiday, back-to-school)
• Audience (e.g., images featuring different demographics)
• Use case (e.g., hero banners, Instagram posts, email headers)

From there, map your images to specific marketing use cases and channels. Think of “use case” as the type of creative (e.g., a banner, a post, a header), while “channel” is where you’ll publish them (e.g., email, social, web). For example:

• Product pages need crisp, detail-oriented shots that highlight features.
• Social media thrives on bold, lifestyle-driven images that stop the scroll.
• Email and text messages do better with clean, simple visuals that still look good on small screens.

Build a balanced mix of photos—wide shots, close-ups, plain, and lifestyle—so you’re not stuck forcing one image into multiple roles. Instead, you’ll always have the right foundation to adapt, edit, or remix for the channel or use case at hand.

Remember, AI builds from what you provide. The more high-quality base images you have, the stronger your results. Keep adding to your brand photo library as you produce or license new photos.

3. Edit photos for different audiences, seasons, channels, or campaigns

An AI photo editor empowers you to take one great photo and adapt it for any context, whether that’s a new season, campaign, or customer segment. Use a strong, on-brand base image, then enter prompts to create multiple variations.

Here are a few ways to go about this:

• Swap props or products. Replace objects in the image to highlight a new feature or promotion. For instance, if your campaign is tech-focused, you might prompt: “Have the man hold a phone instead of a coffee cup.” This lets you repurpose lifestyle shots for product launches, without redoing the shoot.
• Remove distractions. Eliminate clutter or outdated details, like busy décor, off-brand props, or signage with old information. A prompt like “Remove the flowers from the table” takes a spring image into fall.
• Change colors or backgrounds. Adjust hues or backdrops to match your brand palette or reflect seasonal campaigns. A prompt like “Change the background to a bright blue wall” keeps visuals consistent across channels and helps you adapt content for summer vs. winter promotions.
• Add new scenes. Place your product in different settings to tell fresh stories without arranging location shoots. For example, a prompt like “Update the background to a busy Paris street at sunset” turns a plain studio image into a campaign-ready lifestyle shot.
• Tailor subjects and expressions. Edit models or change facial expressions to resonate with specific audience segments. For instance, if you’re targeting a different demographic, you might update a model with a prompt like “Replace the young woman with a more mature woman in a cozy terry robe.”

The key is to edit with your marketing goal in mind. Think about which change will make the photo resonate with your audience or fit the channel. Write prompts that spell out exactly what you want, and fold in your brand guidelines, like “Set the background to #0F8F8F” or “use bright natural light.”

Over time, saving the prompts that work well in a prompt library will speed up editing and improve consistency across your email, text, and social campaigns.

4. Refine AI-generated photos

AI may not deliver the perfect photo on the first try, and that’s okay. Review the options, choose the one closest to your vision, and adjust it if needed. The advantage of AI is speed: you can refine your prompt, re-run it, and compare results in seconds.

Think of this as a back and forth with a creative assistant: the clearer your direction, the stronger the output. For example:

• If the first background is too muted, try: “Make the background a brighter blue.”
• If the scene looks too generic, add context: “Place the woman in a café setting with warm lighting.”
• If the product placement was slightly off, reposition: “Position the laptop more centrally in the woman’s hand and make it a bright red phone.”

Keep iterating until you’re satisfied. Each round builds on the last, so you’re sculpting the image step by step. Eventually, you’ll learn which prompt patterns get you to the look you want faster.

Finally, double-check the details for realism and accuracy. With strong base images, modern AI tools handle lighting, shadows, and perspective convincingly, but details like logos, proportions, and hand positions still need a quick review.

If something looks off, refine your prompt or switch to a different base image.

5. Test and measure results, then tweak photos and re-test

AI edits matter only when they drive better performance. The fastest way to check their impact is to test them in-market.

You can start with a straightforward A/B test. For example, in an abandoned cart email, try swapping a remixed product photo in for an original photo and measure which version earns more clicks. Keep each test focused by changing a single element at a time, like background color, subject, or setting, so you know exactly what influenced the result.

Two important notes, here: when A/B testing, make sure you only test one variable at a time. Since you’re testing images, everything else should stay the same: subject line, copy, layout, CTA, etc. And make sure your list is large enough for statistical confidence.

Determine upfront how you’ll pick the winner. For most campaigns, click rate is a strong starting point because it shows whether the image inspired action. If you can track further down the funnel, even better: conversion rate, or placed order rate, tells you which image actually drove revenue.

Once you find a winning image, you can re-use it across campaigns and flows, like in communications about your email rewards program, to improve retention and repeat purchases. As you iterate, you’ll improve both your images and your prompts, learning which edit drives the best engagement.

You can also use more advanced AI-powered optimization to test more efficiently. AI analyzes your customer base and identifies profile patterns to predict which version of an email or text an individual is most likely to engage with, then sends out that version to them automatically.

Improve photo editing while saving time and money with Klaviyo Remix

Everything we’ve discussed so far—guidelines, a photo library, clear prompts, refined edits, and performance tests—becomes even more powerful when the editing happens inside the same place you run your marketing.

That’s what Klaviyo Remix brings into Klaviyo’s existing drag-and-drop email editor: an AI photo editor, with support for text messages, WhatsApp, and push notifications coming soon.

Remix fits right into your existing email workflow and speeds up the creative process:

• Edit images without leaving the platform.
• Use plain language to make your edits.
• Produce new images in seconds.
• Generate tailored visuals.

To get started, open an email, select an image block, and click “Remix.” Enter a prompt, and choose from several new versions in under a minute. The original stays in your library as a backup, and if you need to adjust, you can refine and re-run without leaving the editor.

Because Remix is built into Klaviyo B2C CRM, there’s no switching tools, exporting files, or waiting on edits. Everything happens where you already create, test, and send.

Try Klaviyo Remix today and put AI photo editing to work where you already build and send campaigns.