AI vs. Human Retouchers in Product Photography

AI is reshaping product photo retouching with faster turnaround and lower effort but speed alone doesn’t ensure production-ready quality. This report examines how AI truly performs when accuracy and consistency matter.

We compared leading AI image models with professional human retouchers across real ecommerce product categories to measure speed, quality, and reusability. The findings highlight AI’s strengths, its limitations, and the scenarios where hybrid workflows deliver the most reliable, publish-safe images.

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Test 4 - AI Retouched - Comparison - CEI Post-Production

AI vs. Human Retouchers in Product Photography - Full Study

Key Findings

1 Speed

Nano Banana Pro completed edits in an average of 25.4 seconds, while human retouchers averaged 28 minutes and 39 seconds. Overall, AI tools were about 22.7 times faster than human retouchers.

2 Quality

Overall, AI image models achieved an average quality score of 5.16 out of 10, representing a 41.7% lower quality than human retouchers.

3 Consistency

AI performance varied widely, scoring between 2 and 10, while human retouchers consistently delivered near-perfect results, averaging 9.5–10 across most areas.

4 Technical Versatility

AI tools performed well on standard formats, but specialized formats and larger image files revealed their current limitations. The study found that AI tools struggled with technical versatility, often producing errors or misinterpretations on RAW and high-resolution TIFF files.

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