Put a photo on a studio background

Every tile below opens this page with that ground already chosen. The previews in the tool itself go one better: once a photo is open, each tile under Background is drawn with your own subject on it.

• White sweepA seamless white paper sweep, lit in the middle. Clean product and headshot look.
• Paper greyMid-grey seamless paper. Holds a white product's edge.
• Charcoal spotA dark backdrop with one light on it. Dramatic portraits.
• Warm linenSoft beige, like a lit canvas backdrop. Warm skin tones sit well on it.
• Studio blueA cool, muted blue. Corporate headshots.
• SageQuiet green-grey. Natural products and calm portraits.
• BlushPale pink. Beauty and fashion listings.
• Olive duskDeep olive falling to khaki. Menswear and leather.
• Pale skyLight blue fading to near-white at the floor. Outdoor feel without a scene.
• PeachWarm peach into coral. Social posts and creator thumbnails.
• MidnightDeep navy to near-black. A dark interface profile.
• TabletopA light wall meeting a darker surface. Products that stand on something.

A studio backdrop is mostly an even field of tone that falls off toward the edges, which is exactly what a two-stop gradient describes. Drawn rather than scaled, it has no resolution: a 2000-pixel listing square and an 800-pixel avatar get the same smooth fall-off, where an enlarged photograph of paper goes soft and shows its compression.

It also keeps the page honest about where things come from. Nothing on this route fetches an image to put behind you; the ground is arithmetic done in the tab, like the cutout and the composite.

Three controls do most of the work. Light match reads the ground's average brightness and warmth and moves the subject halfway toward them, which fixes the most common giveaway — a warm indoor portrait on a cool grey sweep. Light wrap lets a little of the ground's tone spill over the outline, the way a lit backdrop glows around a person standing close to it. Shadow adds a contact ellipse for something standing on the floor of the sweep, or an offset drop shadow for a product lifted off it.

A portrait cut by the bottom of its frame should be seated on the canvas' lower edge; the Subject panel warns when it is floating and does it in one press.

Are these stock photographs?

No. Each ground is a gradient defined by two colours and a shape, drawn by this page at whatever size the canvas is. Nothing is downloaded to use one, and there is no licence attached to a background you made from two numbers.

Why does my subject still look pasted on a studio ground?

Usually light, not the outline. Open Light match and press Match to background: it moves the subject's brightness and warmth halfway toward the ground's average. Then add a contact shadow if the subject should be standing on the sweep.

Can I use one ground for a whole folder of product shots?

Yes. Drop several photographs at once and choose the studio ground under the folder's ground settings. Each picture is laid on the same recipe at its own size, and the results come back as one archive built in this tab.

• Change the backgroundOpen a photo, select the subject, put a new ground behind it.
• Use your own backdropChoose a second photograph, cover-crop it behind the subject and keep the same repairable edge.
• White backgroundOpens on document white, with the off-white escape hatch beside it.
• Why a swapped background looks fakeFour giveaways, each with the control that fixes it.