Separate all the AI flaws from the renders you have already made and get rid of those that are too far from being fixed. Focus on those that can get back to their original form with minimal shoe editing, and that is how to correct AI shoe image renders.
If you want to go deeper into this ‘how to’, the way I’d say is worth your time is to edit them manually. Yes, it’s the biggest truth, even in this era of AI editing.
Stay tagged with this blog of ours, and it will become clear to you right away. We have put together the details here, including how they look before and after each of the fixes in Photoshop.
Weird Shapes and Soles Fix
First, get introduced to Liquify, a special tool that image editors use to turn a flawed photo into smooth clay. They move the giant brush across the screen in such a way that the badly bent sole has no choice but to become properly flat.
Next, your precious tool is Warp Grid, a net by which you can make the shoe sole twist right. It can give you the freedom to stretch the rubber lines into straight lines so that you can drag its small corners as much as you need.
Worried that the grooves aren’t looking shiny enough? Run the Sharpen Tool over the rubber treads, and they’ll be as fresh as new.
Adding Missing Laces, Straps, and Holes
If you’re already used to working in Photoshop, you know very well how useful the Pen Tool is here. This is the very beginning where you put a line at the place right where the shoelaces belong.
Then, you take the Path Stamp Tool and build texture on those lines to make sure it seems like real shoes.
What professional editors do to repair areas where holes are gone, or extra ones seem to show up, is to first locate a clean hole on the shoe.
You can’t tell in advance how useful it is, even in a hunch, until they copy it and paste it along a line on both sides of the shoe.
Floating Shoes and Shadow Correction
Editors cut the shoe out from behind the original background as a first step to cope with these faults. And guess which tool does this job! Yes, the one and only Lasso Tool. What you get by doing this is that all the bad shadows around the shoes are removed.
Now, the editors set out to make a shadow right below the shoe, and for this, they create an empty ground layer right at the bottom of the shoe just where it touches the floor.
Afterwards, with the Soft Brush Tool in very deep black, they softly make dark lines beneath the sole made of rubber.
Shadow creators are a big fan of Gaussian Blur, all the credit goes to its foggy effects creating. It diffuses the edges of dark black colors in such a way that the shadow appears very soft and realistic.
It would be better if the shadow was a little more subtle, wouldn’t it? For this, the Layer Opacity Slider is there for you, which will do the job of bringing out the texture of your floor.
Taking Care of Fake Looking Materials
Editors tackle the shoes looking fake by performing frequency separation, which means creating distinct layers for color and surface. It smooths out the plastic stains on the colored lining that look fake, without ruining the shape of the shoe in the slightest.
There are some melted meshes that look a lot like blurry spider webs. You will find the Texture Brush adequate for this job. If you put a delicate design of fabric, that will look woven straight onto the shoe, and it will be fresh as real.
To keep up a proper brightness of leather by creating shadows, the combination of the Dodge Tool with the Burn Tool is always handy for professionals. You can even work with it to get a flashlight, and the lighting you get out of it is quite neat as well.
Fixing Logos and Text Distortion
You can’t ignore how delicate working on logos that are messy, and you should pay proper attention to mark lines all around them. The laser pen is the tool that does the work here of cutting out the bad parts.
Editors use the Clone Stamp Tool to click on an area (that is relatively free of clutter) of the shoe fabric and thus copy it. Here they just draw directly over the messy text and get the bad parts removal job done for good.
Next, they zoom in on the text and use the Type Tool to write down the letters without any error. Besides, they make the text look like it’s sewn onto the shoe by adding shadows to it.
Matching Real Life Shoe Colors
The process of properly matching shoe color begins with checking it against the color code. At this time, the Color Sampler Tool comes into play to understand if there is any variation in the color blue, green, or red in the shoe.
The color sliders under the Hue/Saturation Layer are both familiar and easy to drag left and right. This gives editors so much comfort that they can adjust them as desired to achieve the colors of the actual product.
Editing experts often have to deal with odd color casts in AI-generated renders. The solution to this is Curves Adjustment, by which they can fix unwanted dark shadows or noisy highlights.
After all this comes the most essential task – sRGB Profile Conversion, without which the entire color correction is in vain. It keeps the shoe color exactly the same for all screens, be it mobiles, tabs, or PCs.
Frequently Asked Questions About Fixing AI Shoe Image Renders
1. JPEG or WebP, which format should I save shoe images in?
Of course, in WebP format. Because it keeps the file size very small without compromising image quality, which results in web pages loading faster.
2. Which way should a shoe face in the main photo for a product listing?
A slight 45 degree angle to the left. Because at this very angle, shoppers can see the side view of the shoes along with the front one.
3. Can’t I just generate whole new AI shoe images instead of manually fixing the flaws?
You can do it, and for some you can even get good results, but it’s not for certain. And when you go to work at a bulk level, there is absolutely no chance of getting flawless results for all of them.
4. How to keep the edges of the shoes away from looking like jagged blades?
It is anti-aliasing, which is the way you can smooth out the pixels on the outside of the shoe. And this smoothing ensures that the edges of the shoe fit its curve exactly as it would in reality.
5. Does using a sunglass of a shoe-wearing model in a lifestyle photo have any impact on the image?
Yes, it does. Because the light from sunglasses can make the environment around the shoes look artificial. In the worst-case scenario, it gets the whole shoe picture blurry.
Summing Up
From the intuitive Pen tool to Curves adjustments, Photoshop tools work well with your upload-ready photo assets. The techniques for using these tools are how to correct AI shoe image renders for eCommerce product listings.
Although not in terms of time, human photo editing beats AI editing in every way. But even if it’s more, the time it will take from you will be worth it. At least you won’t have to worry about fixing new mistakes per cycle result for just a few photos.
The thing is that manual editors have to have an extreme level of skill in dealing with AI render flaws.
Your answer is right here, and that is Retouching Zone. A trusted name that has been maintaining its standards in hand-drawn photo editing services for 12 years in the footwear eCommerce industry.
You can check out their service for free and see if their work meets your expectations.
