Overview
Pietra makes it easy to create visual content for an e-commerce brand. You can use this content for organic social, advertisements, email & SMS marketing, and anything else you can think of. In this guide, we’ll show you how to use Pietra’s AI content studio to create marketing assets.
1. How does AI Content Studio work?
Pietra’s content studio is designed to create lots of images about your brand’s products. The two primary things to know is: you can use an existing photo that you already have and edit it (we call that “remixing”), or you can upload photos of your product, train an AI model, and create lifestyle imagery from scratch.
This guide will walk you through both ways to create content. In 5 minutes or less, you’ll be ready to create content.
By connecting your website during signup, you can sync any product listing for easy importing into content studio.
2. Creating content using existing photos from your website
Background Remix
Background remix allows you to take existing product photos and give them new backgrounds to alter the look and feel. This is very popular when taking a product photo and showcasing it for different sales throughout the year.
The Background Remix feature is best used when you are trying to create images that just contain your product (no humans).
Let’s dive in! You can use Piera’s Background Remix image to create something like this:
Creating your first image:
Navigate to the “Products” tab and see the list of products from your website. If you haven’t yet connected your website, you can always create a new product on the products tab. Here you’ll see a few pre-trained models to get a feel for what Pietra can do.
To start, click the Create Content button and select the “Background Remix” option
You should see your product selected in the drop down. You can also set your desired image size if you know where you’re going to use the content.
Describe the background you want to place the shoes in. And VOILA, Pietra AI will give you 4 images based on the description. It’s that easy :). Remember to be descriptive with your background. Pietra AI will not alter the product in the image, just the background.
Here is an example of how you can put the shoes in the same product on a marble surface that mimics a studio setting”
You'll see your creations!
That’s how you use Pietra’s Background Remix feature. Now you can download these photos and use them wherever you want to. Whether it’s into Canva, Photoshop, or Facebook’s Ad builder, the content is yours!
3. Creating new photos with custom trained AI models Lifestyle Photography
You can also use Pietra’s AI Content Studio to create all new lifestyle photos. Think of this as a way to simulate a photoshoot without having to actually do a photoshoot! Lifestyle photos on Pietra work by training specialized AI models for each product and then generating marketing content based on that product being in the scene. For example, you might want to train an AI model about a specific sweater, and then prompt the AI to put that sweater on a bunch of different models.
While this is for advanced users, it’s very powerful. Now you can “tell Pietra AI” what your product looks like (through a series of pictures) and then instruct them to construct a photoshoot, just with your words. The process of training an AI model is more involved and takes a bit of time, although you have the ability to create much more unique content often involving models and lifestyle imagery. Details and tips on how to train an AI model can be found below and the process for training a model typically takes about 1-2 hours, depending on the product and images uploaded.
You should train a custom model when you want to create new lifestyle photography for your products. If you’d have to hire models and book a photoshoot, you should try Pietra’s AI Content Studio first!
Creating your first lifestyle shot:
Navigate to the “Products” tab and see the list of products from your website. If you haven’t connected your website, you can always create a new product on the products tab. Here you’ll see a few pre-trained models to get a feel for what Pietra can do.
To start, click the Create Content button and select the “Background Remix” option
Now we’re going to train a custom model of your products. You’ll notice in the screenshot above it says “Model ready” but if you haven’t trained a custom model, it will say “Not Trained”. That’s OK, you’re going to train your custom model now! Remember, training a custom model typically takes about 5 minutes to set up, and 2 hours to train. So you can send all the information to Pietra, and then you’ll get an email when your model is trained and ready to use.
Click on the “Start Creating” button under the “Lifestyle Photos” section. You’ll be presented with a screen like below to start training your model.
Upload 5-10 clear photos of your image. These photos should be of multiple angles of the same product. Avoid multiple products in the same photo, weird angles, or photos that don’t clearly show the part of the product you want to display. If you don’t have studio photography, you can use your iphone to take photos against a clear background.
Once the images to be trained are selected, hit the Train Model button at the bottom of the screen.
That’s it! In approximately 2 hours, you’ll receive an email notifying you that your custom model has been trained.
Creating your first lifestyle shot:
Describe the scene you want to create. This is called “Prompting” where you will describe the scene you want to create and content studio will create it for you. For example, here we have trained a custom model for a red sweater and described the scene as women playing basketball in Washington Square Park (in New York City).
With each prompt, Content Studio will output 4 images. Have some fun with it. The more creative your prompts, the better your scenes will be. And as always, you can export photos into your image editor of choice like Canva, Photoshop, or Figma.
Pro Tips: Image Upload Guidelines
How to train your AI model:
Upload between 5-15 images of the product.
Ensure that all the images show the same product, but do so from different angles. It is ideal that nothing else is in the frame except the object. Even iPhone photos will work. Think of it as trying to show someone all the different aspects of the product, without any distractions.
Image Quality:
We recommend a minimum of 1024 x 1024 pixels
Images should be clear and well-lit
Avoid blurry, pixelated, or compressed images
Image composition:
Upload lots of images of the forward facing product. Ensure the primary details (things like logos) are clearly visible.
DO NOT upload images of the product facing backwards, upside down, or any orientation that isn’t “directly facing the image”.
Keep the same colors, skus, sizes, angles, and anything else that can stay consistent. The computer is going to train a model based on what it sees, so don’t confuse it.
Things to remove before training your model:
Other products in the frame that might confuse the ai model
Watermarks or overlays that you don’t want on any other images
Ensure any text, logos, or distinctive features are clearly visible