Transforming Subtle’s Product Photography with AI first Solution

The Problem

Subtle’s original studio photography was clean and technically good, but visually flat. Every image felt the same:

• Same angles

• Same white or grey backgrounds

• Same lighting setup

For a brand that celebrates movement, freedom, mindfulness, that stiffness didn’t reflect the ethos.

The AI-Driven Solution

Rather than booking another location shoot, I opted for an AI-first creative pipeline. The idea:

• Use the original product photo as the base

• Use tailored AI prompts to place it into lifestyle settings

• Maintain product authenticity (texture, shape, all details)

We aimed for images your audience would believe were real photos.

The Workflow

We started with a single master prompt that locked the product’s shape, color, and texture.
This ensured the rope would stay exactly the same across all environments.

Master Prompt

Ultra-realistic product photography of the exact provided coiled rope.  
Do not alter or distort the rope, preserve its shape, color, matte woven nylon texture, and rope ends exactly as provided.  

Background: [INSERT VARIATION HERE]  
Lighting: [INSERT VARIATION HERE]  
Camera: [INSERT VARIATION HERE]  
Mood: [INSERT VARIATION HERE]

Then, we created environment-specific variations:

Background: rope placed on soft sand near calm ocean waves.  
Lighting: warm morning sunlight with soft reflections on sand.  
Camera: 70mm lens, slightly low angle, shallow depth of field.  
Mood: peaceful, natural, energizing

That simple modular structure helped us scale the concept from studio to story, in just hours, not weeks.

The Result

Below are a few examples from the transformation:

Why This Matters

AI isn’t here to replace creative work, it’s here to remove the repetitive parts so we can focus on the storytelling.

Instead of re-shooting, retouching, and resourcing, we used AI as a creative assistant to explore new visual directions, faster and cheaper, while keeping everything authentic to the brand.

Because if you’re not solving real creative problems with AI,
you’re not really using AI.

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If you’d like to see how this experiment unfolded and what others think about it, you can read the original post and join the conversation on LinkedIn:

👉 View the post on LinkedIn

If you’re a startup or founder looking to refresh your brand identity or reimagine your product photography —
especially using AI workflows that save time and cost, let’s talk.