I Edited 50 Product Photos in 30 Minutes (No Photoshop)

The Photoshop Problem

I run a small online store. Product photos are everything. They're also a nightmare.

For years, my workflow looked like this: take photos on my phone (usually with my cluttered desk in the background), transfer to computer, open Photoshop, spend 15 minutes removing the background, another 10 minutes adjusting lighting, save and upload, and then repeat 49 more times. One product photoshoot meant an entire day of editing. Then I found prompt-based image editing.

I uploaded a product photo with a messy background, bad lighting, and slightly off-color. Typed "Remove background" and ten seconds later got a clean product on transparent background. I stared at my screen. That was...it? No selecting? No refining edges? No "that'll be $30/month, please"? Tried another one with "Brighten the image and make colors more vibrant" and boom, done. I edited all 50 product photos in 30 minutes with the same quality as my Photoshop work but a fraction of the time.

How This Actually Works

Instead of using tools and sliders, you describe what you want in plain text. "Remove background," "Make it brighter," "Add a warm tone," "Increase contrast"—the AI figures out the technical details. No layers, no masks, no watching YouTube tutorials to remember how to use the damn pen tool. It processes everything in your browser too, so nothing uploads to servers and your images stay private.

What I Actually Use It For

Background removal changed everything for me. My products used to have my office, my cat, and random Amazon boxes in the background. Very professional. Now I upload an image, type "remove background," download a transparent PNG, and I'm done. White backgrounds for my store, transparent for marketing graphics, and it takes literally seconds.

Phone cameras are great until you look at photos on a real screen and realize they're too dark, colors are off, or there's a weird yellow tint from indoor lighting. Prompts like "Brighten and remove yellow tint" or "Make colors more accurate" save my photos instantly. Stuff that would take me forever fumbling with adjustment layers in Photoshop gets fixed with one prompt.

The batch processing is where it gets stupid good. I had 30 photos from the same shoot that all needed the same edits. Uploaded all 30, applied "remove background" to everything, downloaded the batch, and edited an entire product line in 5 minutes.

What Works (And What Doesn't)

It absolutely nails background removal—seriously, it's scary good. Overall lighting adjustments, color corrections, and basic style changes all work great. Where it gets weird is super specific object removal like "remove the third leaf from the left" or complex artistic effects and extreme detail work.

Think of it like this: routine edits that take 15 minutes in Photoshop now take 15 seconds. Creative work that takes an hour in Photoshop...doesn't really get much help from this. Use it for the boring stuff and save Photoshop for hero images.

The prompts I use most are simple ones like "Remove background," "Brighten the image," "Make colors more vibrant," and "Remove shadows." For product photos specifically, I'll do "Remove background and increase brightness" or "Make colors more accurate and remove yellow tint." For social media, things like "Add a warm filter" or "Make it look more cinematic" work well. Pro tip: one edit at a time works better than combining multiple requests. Do "remove background" first, then "brighten image" as a second step.

The Stuff That Surprised Me

The speed caught me off guard. Like, uncomfortably fast. I kept waiting for it to finish processing and it was already done. The quality is legitimately good too—not "good for AI" or "good enough," but actually good. I can't tell the difference between this and my Photoshop work for most edits.

It even handles weird stuff better than expected. I tried it on photos with tricky subjects like glass, hair, and complex backgrounds, and it still worked. Not perfect, but way better than I thought it would be. The privacy angle matters more than I initially realized too. Processing in-browser means my product photos never leave my computer, which is huge for businesses worried about competitors seeing their unreleased products.

Let me give you the real numbers. Before with Photoshop, 50 products meant 12 hours of editing, a $240/year software cost, and weeks of learning curve. After switching to prompt editing, those same 50 products take 30 minutes, cost maybe $5 worth of credits, and have zero learning curve because you already know how to type. The math isn't even close.

When You'd Still Want Photoshop

Complex creative work, brand-specific styling, hero images for major campaigns, or anything requiring precise artistic control still needs Photoshop. This isn't replacing professional designers—it's replacing the hours of tedious, repetitive work that professional designers hate doing anyway.

Don't overthink your first test. Grab a photo that needs editing, upload it, type "remove background" or "brighten image," and see what happens. That's it. You'll immediately know if this works for your use case.

I was skeptical at first. Figured AI image editing was overhyped tech demo nonsense. Tried it anyway because my Photoshop subscription expired and I was procrastinating on renewing it. Turns out I didn't need to renew it. Your mileage may vary, but for product photos, social media images, and basic editing, this genuinely changed my workflow. Give it a shot. Worst case, you wasted 5 minutes. Best case, you just saved yourself hundreds of hours of boring editing work.