Every image on every connected catalog feed is automatically mirrored into the product's image gallery — not a curated top pick, but all of them — and run through Aimée's image processing: background removal and classification. This gives your templates a full library of options to bind placeholders to, without any manual selection work.
Background removal#
If a catalog has "Automatically create product images with transparent background" turned on, every image is run through a background-remover pipeline before it's added to the gallery. The pipeline is an ordered list of steps you configure on the catalog: each step picks a model version, which content categories it applies to, whether it should run on the main image only, whether to crop, and an acceptable quality score. If a step's result scores below its acceptable quality, the pipeline falls back to the next step in the list — for example, "try v1, and fall back to v3 if the quality is too low."
If no step scores high enough, the best result of all the steps is kept, and that image is flagged for review. The image is never silently left as the original, and it never lands in your ads unnoticed: flagged content failed an automatic quality check, so it shows up on the project's Content page for you to look at. Approving it clears the flag.
The available model versions:
- v1 — Renable's original background-removal model. Fast and inexpensive, and works best on images with a clean, plain white background.
- v3 — Renable's newer background-removal model, and the default for new catalogs. Handles colored or busy backgrounds better than v1.
- v2 — a premium third-party background-removal model. The highest quality option and handles almost anything well, but is by far the most expensive of the three, and can occasionally over-remove parts of product packaging or cartons.
- None — skip background removal for that step; the image is still cropped if the step's crop switch is on. With crop off as well, the step leaves the image exactly as it came from the feed.
It's common to chain models in a pipeline rather than rely on just one — for example, try the cheaper v1 first, and fall back to v3 only when v1's quality score is too low.
You build the chain on the catalog's Settings tab, in the Image processing pipeline section.
Different pipelines for different products#
The pipeline you set on the catalog is the default for every product in it. When you want part of a catalog processed differently — the premium model on your best sellers, plain crops on accessories — add a Remove image background rule on the catalog's Rules tab. You pick its steps exactly the way you pick the catalog's own, and they replace the catalog's pipeline for the products the rule matches. Everything else keeps the default.
Four things worth knowing:
- Because it is a rule, background removal runs for the products it matches even when the catalog's own "Automatically create product images with transparent background" setting is off. The rule says what to do with those products' images, so it doesn't need the catalog-wide switch.
- The same is true of classification: images of the products the rule matches are also categorized, even if the catalog's "Automatically categorize images as product, lifestyle, staged, .." setting is off. A rule that decides how to process a product's images decides how to label them too.
- If several rules set a pipeline for the same product, the one lowest in the rule list wins — the usual rule order.
- It takes effect when you Publish, and only the products whose processing actually changed are processed again.
The same action is available inside a ruleset, so one pipeline decision can cover several catalogs.
Overriding the result manually#
On a specific product, open its image gallery and use Make transparent (v1 / v2 / v3) on any image to force that version regardless of what the catalog pipeline chose. Each image also shows Aimée's own confidence, for example "Aimée thinks the background removal quality of this image is N%," along with which model produced it — useful for deciding whether to leave the automatic result or override it.
You can also fix up a batch at once from the project's Content page: Make all images transparent (v1 / v2 / v3) applies a version across every selected image. See Reviewing and approving content.
Image classification#
If "Automatically categorize images as product, lifestyle, staged, .." is turned on for the catalog, Aimée also classifies each image so your templates and channels can target the right kind of shot. A Remove image background rule classifies the images of the products it matches whatever this setting says — see "Different pipelines for different products" above. Behind the scenes, the classifier only distinguishes three broad buckets:
- Product — the item on a plain or neutral background.
- Lifestyle — the item in a natural setting or on a model (also covers what the classifier internally calls "feature" and "staged" shots).
- Information — badges, infographics, and other non-product graphics.
The manual category picker — in the gallery and in the Content page's bulk Change category action — lists every content category, but for an image the relevant ones are Information, Product, Lifestyle, Staged, and Feature. Use it when Aimée's automatic classification gets a specific image wrong, or when you want finer control than the three automatic buckets provide — for example, marking a specific shot as "Staged" so it's targeted by the Staged image placeholder instead of the general Lifestyle one. See Available placeholders for how each image placeholder resolves.
Correcting a category fixes it across the whole project#
Many catalogs reuse the same image on lots of products — a size guide, a brand banner, a shared packshot. When you correct the category of an image, Aimée treats your choice as the right classification for that exact image from then on: every other product in the project showing the same image gets the corrected category, and newly imported products with that image get it right away instead of the automatic classification.
The correction changes more than the label — the image is also processed as if it had been classified that way from the start. Move an image into a category your catalog makes transparent, and its background is removed; move it out, and it returns to the original picture. This happens immediately on the image you corrected, and on the other products carrying the same image as they are brought up to date shortly after.
Your own decisions always win over the automatic spread:
- A category you set directly on a specific product's image is never changed by a correction made elsewhere.
- An approved image is never touched — approval locks its category. If you want an approved image to change, change its category directly, or un-approve it and then make the correction again (un-approving alone doesn't apply an earlier correction retroactively).
- When you make the correction, a notice tells you how many more products with the same image are getting the new category, and a "Processing image..." indicator stays visible until the corrected image is ready on screen.
- To see every product that uses the same image, open the image's ⋮ menu and choose Show all products with this image. The content view then lists exactly those products, showing only the matching image on each — bulk actions (approve, change category) apply to just these images. The search box shows the image filter as
image:...; clear the search text to get back to the normal view. Manually uploaded and AI-generated images can't be searched this way — only images that came from your feed carry the fingerprint the search uses. - The image you corrected is marked approved for you — you made the call, and the processing that follows from it is applied before the approval is recorded. One exception: if the automatic quality check flags the new result (for example a poor background cutout), the image is left unapproved and flagged so you can look at it first — approving it yourself clears the flag. The copies on other products are not approved automatically; they stay unapproved until you approve them yourself.
If you change your mind, just correct the image's category again — anywhere in the project. The latest correction wins, and every automatically updated copy follows it.
What approving an image locks — and what it doesn't#
Approving ("reviewing") an image locks in exactly two things against Aimée's automatic choices: which processed version is shown (the background-removal result you or Aimée picked) and its category. Aimée never changes either on an approved image on her own.
Approving an image does not freeze it against your catalog's own settings. If you later change the catalog's background-remover pipeline (for example, switching a step from v1 to v3), every image that step covers is rendered again with the new setting — approved images included. An approved image whose rendering changes this way shows as unapproved again until someone looks at it. Nothing is archived or replaced: it's the same image on the same product, with a new rendering. If you change the setting back, the approval returns on its own.
One exception: an image whose version you picked by hand (with Make transparent (v1 / v2 / v3)) keeps both the pick and the approval through a pipeline change. You chose what that image shows, so a change to the automatic pipeline doesn't touch it.
Feed-driven attributes — which catalogs an image belongs to and its position in the feed — always stay automatic, whether or not the image has been approved.
When does a pipeline change reach my images?#
Changes to the background-remover pipeline, the classification switch, and the other settings on a catalog's Settings tab take effect when you Publish the catalog. Publishing rolls the change out to the catalog's products within minutes — you don't have to wait for the next scheduled import. Images that the change doesn't affect (for example, a category the changed step doesn't cover) are left exactly as they were, approvals included.