Studio Blanc AI

Studio Blanc’s AI-powered beauty initiative is pioneering the way for AI and it’s applications in product photography. This initiative is one of the first large-scale integrations of AI image generation and product photography.

Roles

UX Design, UI design, Web Development, AI research

Team

1

Duration

12 weeks end-to-end

AI-Powered Beauty

Studio Blanc is a product and fashion photography studio based in Montreal, Canada. I lived in Montreal for six months in the first half of 2024 and had the opportunity to work with Studio Blanc. At the beginning of my employment, I conducted substantial research into emerging AI technologies, primarily related to video generation from images. This was to create additional video content for marketing purposes for some of Studio Blanc’s clients. However, for most of my tenure, I focused on creating an online eCommerce store to sell AI-generated images for beauty and cosmetic brands to use in their marketing and branding.

From Shutter to Software

As a product photographer with over two years of experience, I know firsthand that taking a quality photograph of a product is more complex than one might imagine. There are dozens of variables and subtleties to make a product look not just good but alive. Conveying the life and personality behind a product is a difficult task. Businesses frequently underestimate the time, money, and skill required to make a product feel alive. However, with the emerging quality of AI image generation tools in the past year, a few independent photographers have incorporated AI-generated backgrounds into their product photography workflow.

Seeking to future-proof their business as photography inevitably shifts towards AI-generated imagery, Studio Blanc was exploring ways to integrate their existing product photography workflow with AI image generation. They aimed to establish a precedent for large-scale use of AI image generation in beauty and cosmetic product photography. I was tasked with exploring avenues for Studio Blanc to implement this technology for beauty and cosmetic brands.

Is it Even Possible Yet?

Where is the technology now? Is AI image generation even good enough to compare to real product photographers? How replicable are the images being generated?

These were all valid questions at the beginning of the process. Early on, it became clear that Midjourney was one of the leading AI image-generation tools, producing both quality and easily replicable and customizable images. I conducted extensive testing on Midjourney to understand the software's strengths and limitations.

Some key findings were:

  • Midjourney can easily replicate the style of an image, including color tones, lighting conditions, and camera angles.

  • Midjourney excels at producing creative setups and new perspectives on a product, which would take a human hours to design.

Limitations:

  • Often produces hallucinations and strange versions of what a product "should" look like, rather than a realistic rendition of the product itself.

  • Small clues often indicate the image is fake (e.g., small blemishes or imperfections) that become apparent the longer you look at the image.

Early testing involved compositing real products realistically. A test image was created with three Lambert bags.

  1. Generate target image with fake products using Midjourney.

  2. Take photos of the real products, matching the type, lighting, and white balance in the AI-generated image.

  3. Use Midjourney to manipulate the target image, removing existing products.

  4. Use Photoshop to composite the real images into the empty background image.

This result indicated early potential in the software, showing that the image could look convincingly real and of high quality.

From Concept to Commerce

Once a significant number of AI images were generated and the proof of concept was established, it was time to design a way to effectively market and sell the images.

Through careful analysis of the images, a rough guide of a user flow was created, and sketches were drawn of a possible user interface. The UI first enabled users to choose a given category of image from four distinct types:

  • Catalog: An image with a flat white background.

  • Studio: A minimalist image taken in a photography studio with some basic props.

  • Lifestyle: An image of the product in context.

  • Creative: The product in a more abstract environment.

The user could then filter the example images by the general color group, the camera angle, and the stylistic features of the image. Once the user settled on an example image, they could further customize it through the “refine product menu,” where they could choose a specific hex value for the color tone, an aspect ratio, and the quantity of products with this type of image.

Sketches of a very rough design were drawn up.

Constructing the UI

These sketches were converted into wireframes and eventually into mock-ups of a potential AI Beauty service. The mock-ups were primarily for functionality purposes, as the final design needed to integrate with the existing styles on the Studio Blanc website.

One early pain point identified was the lack of a filter between a ‘single’ and a ‘group’ product option. This two-option filter was added to the top of the product page for easy switching.

Secondly, product options were added to the ‘studio’ section of the design to ensure more customizability in the types of images brands would receive.

  • The choice to have a switchable menu bar ensured clients could easily switch between image types.

  • Color is an important variable for brand recognition, necessitating the option for a specific hex value.

  • A visual representation of the aspect ratio was necessary for non-technical users to understand the icons.

  • A comments section was added for detailed customization preferences.

Some changes made along the way:

  • Adding product options for Studio Products.

  • Including samples on the side of the Catalog page to illustrate the style.

Style Guide

The style guide for the AI Beauty Service was primarily dictated by the existing style of the Studio Blanc website. The design was minimalist with bold black titles and minimal use of color. Therefore, the AI Beauty service style followed suit.

Simplified Sections

Category Page

The first step was generating hundreds of AI beauty images and categorizing them into different styles. Initially, images were filtered by color, camera angle, etc. However, the complexity of these variations led to confusion and poor user experience. Therefore, the studio section was simplified into five distinct categories (and their group complements):

  • Pedestal

  • Natural

  • Light Peek

  • Floating

  • Hand

This eliminated the need for a filtering menu and potential client confusion.

The service was further simplified by eliminating the lifestyle and creative components, leaving just the “catalog” and “studio” sections. This design decision was made to ease clients into AI image generation without overwhelming them.

Product Page

  • WordPress menu options were styled from dropdowns to images and buttons for user-friendliness.

  • The catalog category's view options were changed to multiselect for increased customizability.

 
 

  • Product images were made adaptable to selected options to visually approximate the final product.

A landing page was also designed and later redesigned.

But How?

A page explaining the AI Beauty service was created, comprising a step-by-step process with images.

Two interactive visual demonstrations were added to highlight the benefits and final image quality. The first shows a client’s product composited into the image. The second compares Studio Blanc’s service with other similar services on the market.

The Future

You can check out the final site, which is currently live here: Studio Blanc Beauty Product Photography.

This project was immensely exciting for me to undertake, and I am eager to see where the rapidly evolving world of AI image generation will take the future of product photography.