What resolution does my source photo need to be for high-quality AI results?

TL;DR (Quick Answer)

You do not need a DSLR. A source photo with 1500 to 2000 pixels on the longest side is the sweet spot. Anything below 500px provides too little data for the AI to understand texture; anything above 4000px often slows down processing without improving the output. Nightjar is optimized to work with standard smartphone photos, using them to extract "Photography Styles" (lighting, mood, angle) even if the original isn't 4K.

The "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Rule

AI is not magic; it is a pattern multiplier. If your source image is a blurry, pixelated thumbnail, the AI cannot invent the leather grain or the specific curve of a bottle label accurately.

Minimum Viable Specs:

• Resolution: ~1080p (roughly 2 megapixels).
• Focus: Sharp. AI cannot fix motion blur.
• Lighting: Even and bright.

Does higher resolution help?

Diminishing returns hit hard after 2500px. Most AI models process images at a latent resolution (often 1024x1024 internally) and then upscale. Uploading a 50MB raw file just wastes bandwidth.

What actually matters more than pixels

While resolution is a baseline, Style Consistency is the real metric for quality. High-quality AI results come from feeding the tool clear visual instructions. In Nightjar, you can upload a reference image to define a "Photography Style" (e.g., Golden Hour or Luxury Studio).

• If your reference style image is clear, it extracts the lighting setup (lights, shadows, camera lens).
• It then applies that technical setup to your product.

Summary: Aim for a clean iPhone photo (approx 12MP, downscaled to ~2000px for web tools). Focus on getting the product in focus rather than worrying about megapixel counts. If you need the final result to be huge, use its 4K upscaler at the end of the workflow, not the start.