Add Shadows API

Ground your product. Control the softness, intensity and direction of the shadow, or let the model decide.

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Trusted by leading companies

Cut-out products float. Shadows put them back on a surface.

Remove the background from a product photo and the product loses its footing - it sits on white with nothing holding it down. The Add Shadows API puts the shadow back. Send the image and the model reads the subject's shape and pose, then renders a shadow that matches: the soft pool under a bottle, the hard edge under a boxed item, the long cast of a shoe lit from behind.

By default the model picks softness, intensity, length and direction for each image. Set any of the five override parameters and it uses your value instead. Set all five and the shadow becomes fully deterministic - the same light on every SKU in the catalog.

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Ideal for catalogs, marketplace listings, and mixed-source product feeds

Cut-out products look photographed, not pasted onto white
Every SKU shares one lighting direction, however it was originally shot
Listings pass marketplace realism and quality checks
Mixed flat-lay and upright feeds run through a single call
Products already photographed once never need a re-shoot
Shadow settings are locked once and reused across every batch

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Core capabilities

Five controls, one light source

Softness, intensity, length, direction and subject pose are separate parameters. Under the hood they position a single light relative to the subject, so the controls behave the way a photographer would expect: move the light back and the shadow lengthens, diffuse it and the edge goes soft.

Automatic or deterministic

Set nothing and the model decides per image. Set some parameters and it fills in the rest. Set all five and the result is fully deterministic - the same light on every product, which is what a catalog needs when images ship in batches over months.

Reads the subject's pose

A flat-lay garment and an upright bottle need different shadows. The model detects which it is looking at and casts accordingly, so a mixed feed can run through one call. Override it with shadow.subjectPoseOverride when the input is ambiguous.

One image editing API to access multiple solutions

Connect to a single API and unlock best-in-class tools for every stage of product visual production: from cutout to adding shadows to generating video.

Background Removal

The AI background removal API detects complex edges, handles transparency, and delivers clean cutouts at scale - ideal for product catalogs and marketplace listings.

Virtual Model

Place apparel and accessories on AI-generated models that match your brand aesthetic. On-model imagery via the Virtual Model API: no casting, no studio, no production timelines.

Flat Lay

Generate consistent, editorial-quality flat lay product photography at enterprise scale. Maintain visual identity across thousands of SKUs through the Flat Lay API.

Ghost Mannequin

Produce ghost mannequin apparel shots with perfect shape retention through an AI-powered Ghost Mannequin API endpoint. Scale invisible mannequin photography without a studio.

Product Staging

Place your product into realistic lifestyle scenes - held, worn, or displayed - with the natural lighting and composition of a high-end photoshoot.

Edit With AI

Describe any change in plain language and our AI makes it - swap colors, remove or add objects, restage the scene, or shift the camera angle.

Product Beautifier

Enhance low-quality product and food images automatically with the Beautifier API. No retouchers, no studios. Our AI restores detail, corrects color, and improves overall quality at scale.

Add Shadows

Add realistic shadows to the main subject of your image, with complete control over the softness, intensity and position of the shadow.

Generate Backgrounds

Dynamically create new backgrounds with our first-class generative AI, perfectly matching the subject of the original picture.

Relighting

Fix badly lit photos automatically. Our AI rebalances over- and under-exposed images, with modes that keep product colors accurate or optimize for portraits.

Text Removal

Remove watermarks, labels, and real-world signage from your images automatically - choose what goes and what stays.

Expand

Resize any image to any format without cropping. Our AI generates the extra background to match the original, filling every empty pixel seamlessly.

Uncrop

Recover subjects clipped by the frame. Our AI reconstructs the missing parts from the visible portion, automatically.

Ironing

Make every garment look freshly pressed. Our AI smooths creases and wrinkles out of clothing photos automatically - no steamer, no reshoot.

Create Any Image

Generate images from a text description alone - no source photo needed. Describe the scene, pick a format, and get original content back.

Uncertainty Score

Know when a cutout needs a second look. Every response returns a confidence score from 0 to 1, so you can auto-flag ambiguous images for review at scale.

Perspective Correction

Straighten angled shots of flat, rectangular products - cards, books, games - into clean, straight-on views. No generative AI, so hallucinations are impossible by design.

Positioning

Control exactly where the subject sits in the result - scaling, alignment, padding, and margins - so every image in a catalog comes out consistently framed.

Smart Cropping

Reframe images around the subject automatically - prompt it to focus on a specific element, or crop faces out for marketplace compliance.

Upscale

Turn small, low-res images into sharp ones at 4× the size - with a fast mode for volume and a slow mode for maximum quality.

Photoroom MCP

Connect Photoroom to Claude with our MCP and unlock professional product listing tools. The MCP contains one tool to access our entire set of features.

Exclusive to Enterprise Plans

The next layer of visual production

Enterprise

Custom models, dedicated capacity, custom endpoints, and SLA-backed uptime. SOC 2 Type 2.

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Visual QA

Even the best AI models get it wrong, so Visual QA scores every output for fidelity, catches the misses, and corrects the details before they reach your customers.

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Enterprise Guarantee

Pay only for the outputs that pass. Set your product-fidelity criteria upfront. Every output is checked against your brief by our proprietary fidelity model. Anything that misses is credited back or regenerated for you.

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Video Generator

The Image to Video API turns static product photography into short-form video automatically. Submit a product image and receive a polished video with natural camera motion, animation, or configured effects.

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Add shadows as one step in a bigger workflow

Cut out the product, add the shadow, set the background and framing. From a raw supplier photo to a listing-ready image in one API flow.

Photoroom API

Benchmarking AI Background APIs

Explore detailed performance comparisons of top AI image-generating APIs.

See the full benchmark

Testimonials

Trusted by the brands selling at first sight

35,000 images processed across markets in a 3-month rollout

"We want to deploy Photoroom for all communication teams — to make marketing teams across all our sports brands autonomous in applying the packshot guidelines, with the same quality and consistency."

Thomas SchouteetenProduct Content Leader, Decathlon

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Photoroom MCP Composition API Fidelity Raters Flat Lay API API to generate backgrounds Ghost Mannequin API Remove Background API ROI calculator Product Beautifier API Marketplace API Playground

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find more information on how to use the Add Shadows API?

More info can be found in our documentation hub. To replicate the example provided in the documentation, paste this code:

curl --request POST \
--url https://image-api.photoroom.com/v2/edit \
--header 'x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE' \
--header 'pr-ai-shadows-model-version: 2026-04-15' \
--form imageFile=@/path/to/image.jpg \
--form background.color=FFFFFF \
--form shadow.mode=ai.auto-with-overrides \
--output result-ai-shadow.png

How do I control what the shadow looks like?

Five parameters, each optional. shadow.softnessOverride (0–1) sets hard or soft edges. shadow.intensityOverride (0–1) sets how dark it is. shadow.spreadOverride sets length - short, medium, long, or 0–90 in degrees. shadow.directionOverride sets where it falls - behind, behindLeft, left, frontLeft, front, frontRight, right, behindRight, or 0–360 in degrees. shadow.subjectPoseOverride tells the model whether the product is flatlay or upright. Leave any of them out and the model picks a value for that dimension itself.

Will every product in my catalog get the same shadow?

Only if you ask for it. Set all five override parameters and the shadow is fully deterministic, so the whole catalog shares one lighting setup. Set none and the model tunes each image individually, which looks better on mixed products but varies shot to shot.

What is the difference between the new model and the old one?

The previous model offered three fixed options through shadow.mode: ai.soft, ai.hard and ai.floating. The new model adds per-dimension control. To use it, send the header pr-ai-shadows-model-version: 2026-04-15 and set shadow.mode=ai.auto-with-overrides. The old values still work.

Can I add a shadow and a generated background in the same call?

We don't recommend it. AI Backgrounds already generates a shadow for the subject as part of the scene, so adding an AI Shadow on top produces two. Use Add Shadows when the product sits on a plain or transparent background.

Can I preview the settings before I run a batch?

Yes. The preview tool lets you move each override and see the result, so you can fix the five values before running them across a catalog. Preview calls consume API images - use Sandbox mode to test for free.

Add Shadows API

Cut-out products float. Shadows put them back on a surface.

Ideal for catalogs, marketplace listings, and mixed-source product feeds

Core capabilities

Five controls, one light source

Automatic or deterministic

Reads the subject's pose

One image editing API to access multiple solutions

Background Removal

Virtual Model

Flat Lay

Ghost Mannequin

Product Staging

Edit With AI

Product Beautifier

Add Shadows

Generate Backgrounds

Relighting

Text Removal

Expand

Uncrop

Ironing

Create Any Image

Uncertainty Score

Perspective Correction

Positioning

Smart Cropping

Upscale

Photoroom MCP

The next layer of visual production

Add shadows as one step in a bigger workflow

Trusted by the brands selling at first sight

35,000 images processed across markets in a 3-month rollout

You might also be interested in

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find more information on how to use the Add Shadows API?

How do I control what the shadow looks like?

Will every product in my catalog get the same shadow?

What is the difference between the new model and the old one?

Can I add a shadow and a generated background in the same call?

Can I preview the settings before I run a batch?

Start selling at first sight