Online retail is on the rise, and the automobile industry is also on that bandwagon. Car retail businesses, including dealerships and marketplaces, are busy improving their digital presence in the digital world. High-quality, professional-looking vehicle images are necessary for that, and to that end, many businesses are relying on car background editing.
A good background can make a massive difference to your car images. Clean, premium backdrops make your pictures feel upmarket, while poor ones bring a dip in the visual quality. These days, plenty of dealership websites and marketplaces are utilizing new-age merchandising solutions for improving image quality, while many others are still employing traditional photo editing methods.
What is Car Background Editing?
Car background editing refers to changing the background in car images, to make it more appealing to viewers or to bring attention to the subject. The vehicle should always be the center of focus in the images so that the buyers’ eyes don’t wander away. If there are distracting elements or if the background is inappropriate, picture background editing can help you rectify that.
Basically, we can categorize car background photo editing into two groups:
- Manual editing (traditional method)
- Automated editing (using AI)
We shall explain the two in detail later in this blog. Let’s first understand the need for background editing in car images.
Who Needs Car Photo Editing Software?
Car retailers – including car dealerships, independent sellers, and automobile marketplaces – need car photo editing software to create high-quality product images to drive sales. Messy and cluttered product images don’t look too appealing to potential consumers. A car editing background is essential to remove unwanted elements and enhance the vehicle’s visual appeal. Appropriate editing will help you beautify your product pictures to capture more eyeballs.
This isn’t just true for online retailers; even offline sales are affected by product images posted on the world wide web.
Why Do You Need Car Image Background Editing?
As per Google statistics, 92% of car buyers research online before purchasing a new automobile. To capture these eyeballs, it is extremely important to have high-quality images that show your cars in detail.
By editing car backgrounds in your images, you can ensure that said images look good, no matter the circumstances in which they were shot. The original pictures could have cluttered or boring backgrounds, but you can edit them out and improve the visual appeal, bring attention to the vehicle, etc.
What are the Advantages of Using a Car Photo Editing App?
There are plenty of benefits of using a car background photo editor:
- Enhance your website
- Attract consumer attention
- Increase focus on the car
- Better social media marketing
- Improve consumer impact
- Increase car sales
Let’s dive a little deeper into it all.
1. Enhance your website
If your images have random backgrounds, i.e., your pictures were shot in different locations or had varying amounts of clutter all around, your dealership website/marketplace wouldn’t look organized. It would instead look like an assortment of random cars. Thus, you risk developing a poor consumer image for your business/brand.
Car background photo editing enhances your VDPs and makes your website look professional and upmarket.
Your website is crucial for your car retail business; it should be a digital extension of your brick-and-mortar dealership. Studies show that around 76% of consumers check out a company’s online presence before visiting a physical store. Uniform, high-impact car listings will help you in that regard.
2. Attract consumer attention
You need your car listings to attract people, don’t you? Your website – or digital dealership as it’s popularly called – needs to attract as many leads as possible. With the proper car background editing, you can create high-quality images, making it easier to grab eyeballs on the world wide web.
Imagine this – there are two online automobile marketplaces. One has listings with cluttered car pictures, along with random images on each VDP. The other has listings with clean, uniform-looking car images. Further, each VDP has a set of professionally-shot images covering the vehicle from different angles. Which one do you think attracts more attention from buyers?
As per Google’s research, 95% of vehicle buyers use digital platforms for information before making their purchase. Capturing these people in the initial stages of their buying journey will give your business a massive boost.
3. Increase focus on the car
A good product image should look pretty and always keep the subject (i.e., the car) in focus. The environment should neither take attention away from the product nor should it bring the visual appeal down. By editing backgrounds in car pictures, you can achieve this goal effectively.
In fact, appropriate post-production of your car photographs can help beautify them significantly. Even if the original images were shot in a busy environment and/or with poor lighting, you could make changes (or hire someone to do it) later, ensuring that all your pictures look good.
4. Better social media marketing
Background editing for car images will help you beyond just your website; it can assist you with impactful automotive marketing on social media as well! Around 82 percent of the US population is on at least one social platform, so the chances of finding potential buyers there are pretty high! In fact, US Digital Trust Survey shows that around 48 percent of social media users have purchased something via a social platform.
You can promote your car listings on different social platforms with targeting advertising, using high-impact images created thusly. You can also improve brand awareness; editing your brand or dealership logo into your car images smartly, along with uniform backdrops, will help with brand recall.
5. Improve consumer impact
Professional, high-quality images bring a positive impact to your car retail business. As stated prior, these make your website look more premium. Clean, high-quality photographs that cover a car from multiple angles and show every detail improve transparency in the buying process, building the consumer’s trust in your brand.
For further impact, you can even highlight specific features on your cars that are worth noticing. E.g: On used cars, you can mark all the dents and damages, so that buyers know exactly what they’re getting. This makes customer research much, much more manageable.
6. Increase car sales
Here’s the end goal – increasing sales! Car photo background editing improves the quality of your car listings, helps beautify your website and improves social media presence, eases consumer research, etc., increasing the chances of people buying a vehicle from you! In simple words: editing car backgrounds for your catalog images directly translates to better sales potential for your business.
Car Photo Editing Backgrounds Related Features
The photo editing car background software can easily remove car background and replace it with a new one. But the best car background editing software can do much more. Here are features that are a must to photo edit car backgrounds.
Automatically Remove Car Backgrounds
Car sales demand quick removal of cluttered backgrounds. AI editors use AI to remove your original background and add a professional car turntable or dealership background in a fraction of a second. These images are ready to be used in your social media posts, advertising campaigns, and online listings.
Change Car Background
The key to selling cars online lies in having clean and consistent backgrounds throughout. An AI editor changes your car image background with natural scenery, a branded storefront, a high-end showroom, or a professional studio, so your leads become your customers. You can choose the best car background for editing your images.
Adding Shadows to Your Car Images
Regardless of the background, the car needs to have a shadow to give it a realistic look. Some AI editors automatically add a shadow to your car image with the background to give you results in a click faster. No need to add the background and shadow separately.
Add Logo and Discount Text to Boost Your Sale
Bring your dealership into the spotlight by adding your brand logo to your images. AI editors let you create branded car images by adding your brand logo on the number plate or adding it anywhere in the car image, with just a click.
How to Edit Car Photo Background
Now that you know the benefits of car image background editing, let’s take a look at how to do it.
For manual car photo editing, you’ll need a professional editor, along with the appropriate editing software and hardware. This will increase your expenses. Well, you could learn how to edit pictures yourself or get a staff member to do that. This would allow you to skip hiring additional help and reduce costs to an extent.
The second method – automated car photo editing – is much simpler. You don’t need to purchase extravagant hardware or hire professionals for the job. You only need an automated car background photo editor (like Spyne AI smartphone app or Spyne Darkroom). The system does all the heavy lifting, thereby reducing your burden massively.
Car Background Photo Editing – Manual VS Automated Editing
Which car background photo editing method is the best for your business? Let’s look at the benefits and drawbacks of both to understand that better.
Manual car photo editing
The biggest benefit of editing car backgrounds manually is that it gives you more creative control over the entire process. Don’t like a particular portion in any image? Change it! Shadows falling inappropriately, or don’t enjoy the lighting? Change that as well!
The biggest drawback, however, is that manual photo editing of car background solutions isn’t scalable. If your car inventory size is small, you might not have problems regarding speed and quality. However, as your inventory size increases or if you have a massive lot with hundreds of cars, manual editing won’t serve your business needs properly.
Another drawback here is the heavy expenses involved. As mentioned earlier, you’ll have to invest in expensive software (image editing applications like Adobe photoshop) and hardware (powerful computers to run said software).
Automated car photo editing
For a car photo editing background software, you can use the Spyne app for AI-powered car editing features.
- Install the Spyne app, which is available for both Android and iOS. If you don’t want to install the app, you can use Darkroom online through your browser.
- Choose a car category on the app. If you are using Darkroom online, choose the automobile category.
- Start a new project on the app.
- Upload your images to be edited on the app or Darkroom.
- Select the edits you want to make from the side panel. You can remove and replace car background for editing images with over 100+ background options that contain outdoor scenery, studios, showrooms, storefronts, or plain backgrounds.
- Shadow generation is done automatically to save you time. You can also choose to add window tint to remove difficult reflections or use the number plate masking option to hide the number and add your brand logo.
- Save the project, and the images are ready for download. These are now ready to be used on your VDPs, marketing campaigns, social media posts, or any other commercial use with no attribution required.
If you work with a dealership management system, auction platform, or website managing service, Spyne can integrate into your process seamlessly. Spyne can work with your dealer platforms to integrate into your workflow with no extra effort on your part. No need to go through the process of reshooting images. We pick up your inventory images directly from your DMS, auction integration, or website management platform, beautify them, and send them directly to be published on your listings.
Spyne has partnered with dealership, marketplace, and auction integration services listed below:
- vAuto
- Inventory+
- MaxDigital
- Homenet
- Auction Edge
- Auto Certo
…and we’re working to expand this list!
Which is better for your auto dealership
If you have a small inventory size and the expenses aren’t a bother, then you can go for manual editing solutions. However, automated solutions are faster, more affordable, and offer consistent quality. There isn’t any practical reason to opt out.
Bonus: Car background Editing using Spyne AI
Spyne’s AI-powered cataloging platform is a brilliant solution for all your car image background editing requirements. Through computer vision and deep learning, our AI systems are capable of detecting a vehicle in an image (or the subject in an image with many vehicles) and editing car backgrounds automatically.
You can choose from over a hundred high-definition backgrounds from Spyne’s library, depending on your needs. Editing full HD car backgrounds in your vehicle images and uplifting the quality of your catalogs is a breeze! There are multiple floor options (with and without virtual turntables) and various wall choices. Some backdrops even include outdoor locations.
Other than that, you can also choose to add custom backdrops, which could include your dealership branding, either subtly integrated into the environment or boldly placed in the images. For the images to look natural, Spyne takes a few extra steps, like adding shadows and removing reflections!
Features of a Spyne Car Photo Editing App
Car photography has never been easier. Quickly remove car image backgrounds with Spyne’s app and Darkroom. Powered by AI technology, It is the best car image editing app for businesses since it offers many advanced features. Just click a picture of your car, choose a background, and get the ready image within seconds. Here’s a closer look at Spyne’s automated editing operation and all its features:
Add premium backgrounds to images and videos
Spyne’s car background editor not only beautifies your images, but it also works wonders on spin videos (360-degree visuals). The software not only replaces the backdrop, but it also takes care of the depth of vision and proper scaling so that the vehicle doesn’t look out of place in the final pictures. The system even clears up the original background through windows so that the images look natural.
We have a library of 100+ aesthetically pleasing backgrounds, and you can even add your own custom ones.
Realistic shadow generation
Our car background editor also generates life-like shadows on the virtual floor in the edited pictures. Thus, the images feel a lot more realistic. Without shadows, it would feel like the cars are floating on the virtual background, which would look fake. We can’t have that, can we?
Doesn’t matter if your car pictures were shot outdoors in the lot or indoors in a studio. Spyne’s AI system can detect the automobile’s orientation and create appropriate shadows based on that.
Add reflections on the floor.
Apart from shadows, the system also adds reflections on the virtual floor. As the floor material is different in different backdrops, the intensity of reflections is adjusted accordingly!
Numberplate masking with logo addition
When listing your vehicles online for sales, you’ll need to clean up the number plate as well. This is especially important for used car dealerships. You can add your dealership or marketplace logo instead, which is excellent for brand awareness.
Also, when listing an automobile on multiple online marketplaces, you’ll need to add the appropriate logos for individual listings. With Spyne, you can do that with just a click! The system allows you to switch numberplate branding effortlessly.
Benefits of Spyne’s AI-led Car Background Photo Editing Platform
1. Completely automatic
Just choose the background you want in your car images and sit back. The system does all the editing and gives you the output in seconds! Even the most cluttered or mundane car pictures can be converted into high-quality, professional-looking images.
2. Save hours (or even days) in editing
AI-powered photo editing of car backgrounds is way quicker than traditional (manual) editing. The sooner your images are ready for the market, the faster you can sell. For depreciating assets like cars (especially pre-owned ones), this is a significant advantage. Thus, automated editing gives you a significant advantage when selling a used car.
3. Consistent quality
To err is human, right? No matter how careful one is, there are bound to be a few mistakes every now and then. Spyne’s AI-powered car background photo editor, however, doesn’t have such problems. The output quality remains consistent throughout, regardless of the volume of work.
4. Multiple HD car photo backgrounds in editor
Spyne has a plethora of high-definition car backgrounds available for use, including indoor and outdoor virtual environments. You can choose one as per your website theme or personal preference! There’s even the option to upload a custom car background if you wish.
How to Replace the Car Image Background using Spyne AI
Here’s a quick tutorial on editing car backgrounds using Spyne’s AI cataloging platform.
- Go to the Spyne darkroom or download our smartphone app.
- Choose the “automobile” category to proceed further.
- Click on upload and select all the car images you want to process.
- Upload your brand logo and select its position in the pictures (you can skip this step if you don’t wish to add your branding).
- Check Spyne’s library of 100+ HD car backgrounds in the photo editor, and choose the one you want.
- Click on “Process Image” to apply the changes. The car background editing is 100% automatic!
- Click on ‘Download’ to save the edited images. Please note: downloading the processed pictures requires you to purchase credits. You get some free credits when you sign up for the first time for Spyne’s services.
Follow these steps, and you’ll have studio-quality images within seconds. If you have more questions, then book a demo, and our team will reach out to you to address all your queries.
Conclusion
Car background editing is an important step in creating high-quality automotive images for marketing and sales purposes. With the right tools and techniques, dealerships can enhance the appeal of their inventory and attract more customers. By outsourcing this task to professionals or investing in AI-powered software solutions like Spyne, car dealerships can save time, money, and resources while ensuring that their online presence is strong and impactful. Syne offers a wide range of car backgrounds for editing to enhance the visual appeal of your automotive images. Our car photo editor background offers an easy and efficient way to change the car background, giving images a professional touch.
