I sold pots at markets for six years before I ever put one online. The first listing I made got zero clicks for a month, and the reason was obvious the moment I compared it to a shop that was selling. Their photos were shot from a low angle with a hard light raking across the rim. Mine were shot straight down from above, flat, on a bedsheet, and the glaze looked like melted candle wax.
Ceramics are a hard subject. Glaze is glossy, so it catches every reflection in the room. It's also semi-transparent at the edges, which cameras and image tools both struggle with. If you're shooting your own work and using AI anywhere in the workflow — whether that's an AI image generator for the backgrounds you don't have or a cleanup tool after the fact — here's the checklist I wish someone had handed me.
Shoot the profile first, the top view second
Buyers care about silhouette. A mug's handle, a bowl's foot, the way a vase narrows at the neck — none of that reads in a top-down shot. Put the camera at rim height or slightly below and shoot across the piece. Then, and only then, take one overhead to show the interior and the glaze pooling.
If your piece lives on a shelf and you can't get below it, take the shelf out. A stack of books and a folded towel will do. Nobody is grading your studio, they're grading the pot.
Kill the overhead light
The single biggest tell between an amateur and a hobbyist-who-sells is the reflection stripe down the side of a glazed pot from a ceiling light. Move the piece to a window, put a sheet of parchment or a cheap diffuser between the window and the pot, and shoot with the light coming from the side at about 45 degrees. Side light shows texture. Front light flattens it and puts a glare spot right in the middle of the best part of your glaze.
Build a scale cue in
Buyers constantly misjudge size, then leave three stars because the mug was "smaller than expected." Don't rely on a ruler shot. Put something familiar in the frame that doesn't dominate — a teabag, a lemon, a hand holding the handle at the edge of the crop. It answers the question without shouting.
Where AI actually helps and where it ruins the sale
AI is genuinely useful for two things in a pottery listing: backgrounds and dust.
Backgrounds first. You can shoot on your kitchen table and swap in a linen surface, a concrete slab, or a plain warm grey. If you're generating a replacement backdrop, describe the surface texture and the light direction, not the vibe. "Crumpled natural linen, soft window light from the left, warm grey, no props" gets you something usable. "Rustic artisan aesthetic" gets you a fake barn and a bunch of dried wheat you didn't ask for.
What to leave alone
Do not let any tool retouch the glaze. This is the one hard line. Glaze has small irregularities — pinholing, a crawl near the foot, a slightly uneven rim — and those are the evidence that a human made the thing. Tools that "auto-enhance" will smooth them out, and your handmade mug starts looking factory-extruded. Buyers who pay handmade prices can spot this instantly, and they don't mention it in reviews, they just leave.
The same goes for colour. A celadon that photographs slightly green-grey should stay slightly green-grey. If your listing photo shows a colour the buyer will never see in real life, the return is your problem, not the shipping company's.
Write the prompt like a photo brief, not a wish
When you do reach for a generator — a lifestyle shot for social, a seasonal banner, a card insert — write it the way you'd brief a photographer who has never met you. Include the camera height, the light source and direction, the surface, and what should be out of focus. Leave out adjectives about quality. Words like "professional" and "stunning" don't do anything; "shot at rim height, 50mm, f/2.8, background falls off into soft shadow" does.
A quick checklist before you publish
One profile shot, one three-quarter shot, one overhead. Side light, no ceiling glare. A scale cue in at least one frame. Colour checked against the actual pot in daylight. Glaze texture intact — no smoothing. A short note in the description about the firing and the clay body, because the people who buy handmade pots read that part.
Ten listings shot this way will outsell a hundred shot flat on a bedsheet. If you want to try building backdrops or seasonal promo frames without booking a studio, the tool at aiimagegenerators.net handles that side of the job well enough that nobody has ever asked me where my photographer was.