Professional product photography has always been one of those costs that small businesses either swallow reluctantly or skip entirely. A single studio session with a photographer, lighting equipment, and post-production editing can run anywhere from $500 to several thousand dollars. Most small e-commerce sellers end up shooting products on their kitchen counter with a phone and hoping for the best.
Google just made that whole calculation irrelevant.
What Pomelli Photoshoot Actually Does
On February 19, Google Labs launched Photoshoot, a new feature inside its free AI marketing platform called Pomelli. The tool uses Google's Nano Banana image generation model to transform rough product photos into polished, studio-quality images in a few clicks.
Here is the workflow: upload any product photo (phone snapshots are fine), pick a template (studio lighting, lifestyle setting, or let the AI suggest one), and hit generate. Pomelli applies professional lighting, backgrounds, shadows, and composition automatically. The results look like they came from an agency shoot.
The key differentiator is something Google calls "Business DNA." When you connect Pomelli to your existing website or brand assets, it learns your visual identity -- your color palette, aesthetic preferences, and overall brand tone. Every generated image stays consistent with your brand, not just generically polished.
Why This Matters More Than Another AI Image Tool
There is no shortage of AI image generators. But Pomelli Photoshoot is different from tools like Midjourney or DALL-E in a critical way: it is purpose-built for product marketing, not general image creation.
The tool understands that a candle company needs warm, lifestyle-oriented backgrounds while a tech accessory brand needs clean studio gradients. It adjusts lighting direction and intensity to match the environment it generates. It refines shadows, enhances textures, and sharpens product details specifically for e-commerce and social media use cases.
And it is completely free. No subscription. No per-image charges. No API keys to manage.
For context, Amazon sellers routinely spend $20 to $50 per product image through services like Soona or ProductScope. A business with 50 SKUs could easily spend $1,000 or more just on basic product photos. Pomelli eliminates that entire line item.
Beyond the Photoshoot: Campaign-Ready Features
Photoshoot is not the only update. Pomelli now includes several features that turn it from a photo tool into a lightweight marketing platform:
- Improved image editing: You can modify generated images with natural language prompts like "change the background to a forest" or "make the lighting warmer."
- Style transfer: Upload a reference image and Pomelli will restyle your product shots to match that aesthetic.
- URL-based campaigns: Enter your product page URL and Pomelli pulls the images, title, and description to generate complete campaign visuals automatically.
- Image grounding: Upload reference images directly into campaign prompts so generated creatives match specific visual requirements.
These are not gimmicks. They represent the kind of workflow that a marketing team at a mid-size company would handle -- except now a solo founder can do it in 15 minutes.
The Practical Playbook for Small Businesses
If you sell physical products online, here is how to put Pomelli to work immediately:
Start with your worst-performing listings. Look at your website or marketplace listings with the lowest click-through rates. Poor product images are almost always the culprit. Upload those existing photos to Pomelli and generate professional alternatives.
Build a consistent product catalog. One of the biggest visual credibility gaps for small businesses is inconsistent product photography. Some images have white backgrounds, others have kitchen counters, others have outdoor lighting. Pomelli's brand consistency features can normalize your entire catalog in an afternoon.
Create seasonal and promotional variants. Need Valentine's Day versions of your product shots? Holiday themes? Lifestyle images for Instagram versus clean shots for Amazon? Generate multiple versions from the same source photo without reshooting anything.
Test before you invest. Before committing to a professional photography session, use Pomelli to generate concept shots that show what different styles would look like with your products. Then you can brief a photographer with specific examples instead of vague direction.
Where It Fits in the Bigger Picture
This launch sits at the intersection of two trends we have been tracking closely. First, Google's aggressive push to embed AI into every business workflow -- from Chrome to Workspace to now marketing creative. Second, the rapid democratization of tools that used to require specialized agencies or significant budgets.
Pomelli Photoshoot is currently available in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Google has not announced expansion plans yet, but the pattern with Google Labs experiments is to roll out globally once initial feedback is collected.
The Bottom Line
The gap between how a Fortune 500 brand presents its products online and how a small business does it just got dramatically smaller. Professional product photography is no longer a budget question -- it is a "did you spend 10 minutes on Pomelli" question.
If you have been competing against larger brands with better visual assets, this is your equalizer. And if you are already investing in AI tools for your business, adding free product photography to your workflow is the easiest win available right now.
Ready to upgrade your product visuals? Try Pomelli Photoshoot today -- it takes less time than reading this article. And if you want help building a complete AI-powered marketing stack for your business, reach out to us. We help small businesses integrate tools like these into workflows that actually scale.