How can I add shadows to my product photos using AI?

Quick Answer

The fastest way is to open the photo in Nightjar and describe the shadow you want in plain English, for example "add a soft contact shadow under the bottle, light from the upper left." For a whole catalog, do it on the Create tab instead and pick a reusable Photography Style that carries the same lighting and shadow language across every product, so direction and softness do not drift between Generations.

Why shadows are physics, not decoration

Shadows tell the eye that an object is real. If the shadow is wrong, the object looks like it is floating.

• Direction: Must match the light source.
• Softness: Depends on the size of the light.
• Falloff: Gets lighter as it moves away from the object.

A painted-on Photoshop drop shadow rarely reads as real because it ignores all three. It does not wrap around surface detail, does not soften with distance, and does not match the lighting in the rest of the scene.

Adding a shadow to one existing photo

For a one-off, use Nightjar's Edit tab, the plain-English editor where Assets are referenced as @image1, @image2, and so on. Drop the image in and describe the shadow you want in one sentence:

• "Add a soft diffused shadow directly under the product."
• "Add a long, low-angle shadow falling to the right, as if from late-afternoon sun."
• "Add a hard, defined shadow with light from the upper left."

The shadow is rendered as part of the lit scene rather than painted on top, so it picks up the surface texture and matches the rest of the image.

Adding shadows consistently across a catalog

For more than one product, the lever is reuse. Nightjar treats lighting and shadow as part of a reusable Photography Style, the saved visual direction that controls camera feel, lighting, mood, color, and atmosphere for a Generation.

1. Upload the product Asset.
2. Pick a Photography Style with the lighting and shadow you want, for example a hard sunlit Style or a soft studio Style. Nightjar ships 150+ curated Styles, or build one from a reference image that already has the shadow language you want.
3. Add Custom Directions if needed. Custom Directions are user-written notes layered on top of the Style, useful for tuning shadow type and intensity, for example "long, low-angle shadow" or "soft diffused contact shadow under the product."
4. Generate. The shadow is rendered as part of the lit scene rather than added on top.

Save the full setup, including Style, Composition, Background, and output settings, as a Recipe (Nightjar's reusable saved Create-form setup) so the same shadow direction, softness, and color temperature apply to every other product without rebuilding the brief.