The supplier photos you can't actually use

While testing Plien Roob, we fed in a product photo that carried another site's watermark. The result came back as expected — a model wearing the item — except the other site's watermark had been copied into the output image along with everything else.

The system reads the source photo closely on purpose, because its main job is keeping the fabric, colour and any printed text faithful to the real item. To it, a watermark sitting on the cloth is part of the pattern on that cloth. It preserves it deliberately, rather than treating it as something foreign to be removed.

• Supplier photos usually belong to the photographer or the brand, not to whoever resells the item.

• Selling the same model of product does not give you a right to that seller's photos.

• Photos saved from another website fall under the same rule, even when you physically hold the item.

Our legal information page covers this in more detail. We are not lawyers — what we publish there is what our system actually does, plus general points to be careful about.

Before the item ships, take one photo on your phone. No studio, no lighting kit. That photo is unambiguously yours, and it can carry everything downstream — a model wearing it, a shaped shot with no person, and a different scene on every image — without the item ever being in your hands again.

• No watermark or logo from another site anywhere in the frame.

• A photo you took yourself, or one you clearly have the right to use.

• At least 1280 pixels wide, with focus locked on the item.

• Shot in daylight near a window, with light coming from in front of the item rather than behind it.

• The whole item visible, with no hand or hanger covering an important part.

We measured this on the ghost mannequin tool with two Thai-print T-shirts, five runs each and every setting held constant. A sharp 1280px photo with large lettering held its shape 5 times out of 5. A blurry 720px photo with small lettering held it 3 out of 5, and garbled the Thai text printed on the shirt all 5 times. Stepping closer and tapping to focus before pressing the shutter is how you get a photo like the first one.