Writing prompts that produce good product shots
The difference between a muddy render and a shot you would put on a product page is almost always the words you gave the model.
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Say what the product is, in the first line
Models fill gaps with guesses. Write a candle on a table and you get a generic candle in a generic room. Write a matte black soy wax candle in a ribbed glass jar with a brass lid, on a pale oak table and the model has something real to hold onto.
Name the material, the color, the finish, and the size relationship. "Brushed steel" behaves differently from "chrome". "Ribbed glass" catches light differently from "frosted glass". These words are doing real work in the image.
Put the product description first, before the scene. The model weights the opening of a prompt heavily, so get the object right, then describe the room around it.
Light is most of the photo
Product photographers spend their day on light, and your prompt should too. soft window light from the left, gentle shadow on the right reads very differently from hard studio flash, deep shadows.
For most catalog work, soft and even wins. Try large softbox overhead, low contrast, no harsh reflections. For food and drink, side light gives texture. For jewelry you usually want controlled highlights, so name them.
If the first result looks flat or dull, the fix is almost always a light instruction, not a longer description of the object.
Camera words the model understands
You do not need a photography degree, but a few terms steer the result. eye-level, straight-on gives a clean catalog look. 45-degree angle, slightly above feels like a lifestyle shot. close-up macro, shallow depth of field blurs the background and pushes the product forward.
Framing matters for where the image will live. A square, centered composition with a little room around the product suits a shop grid. A wide shot with empty space on one side leaves room for text on a banner.
Send your real product as a reference
A description can only go so far. If you already have one usable photo of the item, pass it as a reference image so the model keeps your actual shape, logo, and label instead of inventing a lookalike.
With Figgshield, a reference image you send is used in memory for that generation and never stored. Generated files sit on a private link for seven days and are then deleted, so nothing lingers.
This is the fastest way to get from "close" to "that is my product". Describe the new scene and light, and let the reference carry the object.
A prompt template you can reuse
Keep a fill-in-the-blank structure so every shot starts consistent: [product, material, color, finish], [surface it sits on], [background], [light direction and softness], [camera angle and framing], [mood].
Worked example: a small-batch hot sauce bottle, clear glass with a kraft paper label, on a weathered wood board, blurred kitchen background, warm side light from the right, 45-degree angle slightly above, appetizing and homemade.
Change one variable at a time. If you rewrite the whole prompt every round, you never learn which word did the work.
Draft cheap, finish sharp
Iterate at 1K or 2K, then run the winner at 4K. On Figgshield a Nano Banana 2 image is 8 credits at 1K or 2K and 16 credits at 4K, so exploring at the lower size costs the same eight credits and gives you room to try more directions.
Because Figgshield bills at cost with no markup on the model, testing five compositions is genuinely cheap. The $5 seven-day Pro trial includes 150 credits, which is a lot of product drafts.
When a still is right, you can turn it into a short video by passing the image id, so a hero shot becomes a five-second loop for the product page without a reshoot. A five-second clip is 35 credits, and one credit balance covers both stills and video.