For Etsy shops

Model photos for a shop where one person makes everything

An Etsy shop is usually one or two people. You cut, you sew, you photograph, you pack. Booking a model, a photographer and a location every time a piece is finished was never realistic — which is why so much of Etsy is shot on a dress form against a wall at home.

That is the gap this closes. You send the photo you already took, and the piece comes back worn by a model — the same model on the next piece, and the one after that, so the shop reads as one shop instead of a pile of separate afternoons.

Being honest about AI on a handmade marketplace

Etsy is built on people wanting to know who made the thing, and buyers there care about that more than on most marketplaces. So this is worth saying plainly rather than skirting.

• The item stays yours and stays real. The garment in the frame is the garment in your photo — we are not generating a product, we are changing what it is worn on.
• Say that you used AI for the photo. Etsy expects sellers to be transparent about how AI was used, and the wording of those expectations has changed more than once — read the current Creativity Standards yourself rather than trusting a blog post, including this one.
• The marker is already in the file. Every frame we hand back carries a machine-readable AI marker. The visible line in your listing is yours to write, and it should be.

Keep your honest photograph on the card

If your pieces are one of a kind — vintage, made to measure, a single bolt of fabric — the buyer still needs to see the real thing, with its real wear and its real buttons. Do not replace that photo. Put the model shot beside it: one says "this is exactly what arrives", the other says "this is how it looks worn".

What it costs

A shot is 5 credits. Most Etsy shops are not adding a hundred items a month, so the honest recommendation is usually a one-off pack rather than a subscription — you buy credits, you use them when a new piece is finished, nothing renews.

Questions

Will the piece still look like my piece?

That is the part we work hardest on. Every frame is compared against the photo you sent and the colour corrected until the difference sits below what an eye can separate, and we read which colour belongs on which part of the item from your photo rather than letting the engine decide.

Can I choose the model?

Yes — including build, so the model can look like the people who actually buy from you rather than a sample size.

What about things nobody wears?

Candles, ceramics, jars and prints go through the product-only mode: the same clean catalogue frame, with no person in it.

Do I have to disclose it?

Check Etsy's current rules and follow them. Our part is that the file itself carries a machine-readable AI marker, so you are not disclosing something you cannot evidence.