You know that feeling when you find out a tool you needed has been sitting there for weeks and nobody told you about it? That’s exactly what happened to me this week with Google’s latest round of AI releases.
So here’s the deal. The creator behind this walkthrough, Skill Leap AI, just put together a thorough breakdown of Google Labs and its hidden gems, specifically a platform called Pomelli and its brand new Photoshoot feature. And honestly, the workflow he shows off is worth your attention if you create any kind of visual content for a business.
What’s new
Google has an entire experimental playground at labs.google where they quietly ship AI tools that most people never discover. Inside that playground sits Pomelli, a free platform that generates on-brand social media campaigns. It’s been around for a few months, but the twist is a freshly added feature called Photoshoot that turns a single product image into professional-looking studio shots, lifestyle photos, and in-use mockups. All powered by Google’s Imagen (Nana Banana Pro) model.
The expert also walks through updates to Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and a completely revamped design tool called Stitch that lets you prompt your way into full UI designs for mobile and web apps.
The twist: your phone camera is now a photo studio
Here’s what caught me off guard. Photoshoot doesn’t need polished product images to work. The author literally takes a camera sitting on a desk, snaps a photo, uploads it, and gets back four distinct product shots: a clean white-background studio version, a floating product shot, an in-use lifestyle image, and an in-context environmental photo. All from one casual phone picture.
For anyone who’s ever priced out a product photographer or tried to fake studio lighting in their apartment, this is a big deal. And it’s completely free right now while it’s in Labs.
🔧 Step-by-step mini-workflow
Here’s the process the creator demonstrates for going from zero to branded content:
- Set up your Business DNA. Head to Pomelli (link available at labs.google). Enter your business website. It crawls your site and pulls your logo, brand colors, fonts, tagline, values, voice, and every image it can find. One-time setup.
- Generate campaign ideas. Go to the Campaigns tab. Type a prompt like “Create five posts for an Instagram campaign with a premium feel targeting busy entrepreneurs with short educational captions.” Pick your format (vertical for Stories/Reels, square for feed). Hit generate.
- Refine the output. Each generated post is editable. Use “fix layout” if something looks off. Change headlines, fonts, descriptions, and CTAs individually. You can ask AI for new versions of any single element with a follow-up prompt.
- Animate for extra engagement. Hit the animate button on any static post to turn it into a short motion graphic. Download as video for Reels or Stories.
- 📸 Run a Photoshoot. Upload a product image (even a phone snap). Choose your aspect ratio. Pick from templates like Studio, Floating, In Use, or In Context. Generate, then edit results with text prompts if anything needs adjusting.
- Feed Photoshoot results back into campaigns. Add your new product photos to your Business DNA library. Now every future campaign can pull from those professional-looking shots automatically.
🛠️ Beyond Pomelli: Google Workspace AI updates
The author also covers several Workspace upgrades worth knowing about:
- Google Docs now has a “Generate a Doc” prompt box. You can use the @ symbol to pull content from other files in your Drive. There’s also a new “Match doc format” feature coming that will learn your writing voice and apply it to any document.
- Google Sheets can now source data from Drive, Gmail, and web search simultaneously. Type a prompt, and it builds a populated table you can insert and edit like normal.
- Google Slides is getting fully editable AI-generated slides, with full deck generation coming soon.
- Stitch got what Google calls their “biggest update in design ever.” It’s essentially vibe coding for UI design. Type a prompt describing a productivity app, and it generates typography, color palettes, dashboard layouts, calendar pages, and more. All editable through follow-up prompts.
💡 Pro tips
- Start with Business DNA even if you only want Photoshoot. The platform works better when it understands your brand context. Your Photoshoot images get added back to that DNA, creating a flywheel of on-brand assets.
- Expect occasional errors during peak usage. The expert notes that animations and video exports sometimes fail when traffic is high. Just retry. It’s free, so the only cost is a little patience.
- Don’t sleep on the edit function inside Photoshoot. If a generated lifestyle shot looks slightly off (like an awkward facial expression on a model), you can describe what you want changed and it’ll regenerate. You can also download and refine further in Gemini if you prefer more back-and-forth control.
Who this matters for
Small business owners, e-commerce sellers, solo content creators, and anyone who needs decent-looking branded visuals without a design team or a Canva Pro subscription. The zero-cost entry point makes it worth testing today before Google inevitably puts usage limits on it.
🎬 Check out the full video for live demos of every feature, including the Stitch UI design tool and the Google Workspace updates. Seeing the Photoshoot results generated in real time is pretty convincing.