Shot Planner

Shot Planner is the bulk-planning view for campaign images and product studios, found under Automations at /batch. You start a shoot, add product photos, and let a planning agent draft what to create across all of your products at once. Once the plan looks right, you generate previews to check the results, then generate finals when you're ready to spend credits.

If you've used Brandmachine before, Shot Planner is the renamed and restructured version of the old Batch Editor.

Creating a Shoot

From the Shot Planner list, click the New shoot split button and choose:

• Product Studio shoot, for product photography through Product Studio.
• Campaign shoot, for campaign images.

This choice sets the shoot's journey. You can switch it later from the Inspector, and switching is non-destructive: it does not touch an existing plan. If a plan is already drafted for the old type, you'll see a reminder to redo the plan so the shots match the new type. Nothing is wiped automatically, but the plan won't reflect the new type until you redo it.

Two Moments: Setup and Planning

A shoot moves through two moments rather than a fixed set of steps.

Setup (no plan yet). Drag product photos into the Products drop zone, or click it to browse (jpeg, png, webp). Once you have images in place, click Draft the plan in the header.

Planning (a plan exists). The Products drop zone gives way to an inline plan board, with a collapsible "Show/Hide photos" strip if you want to see the source images again. The header button changes to Redo plan.

How the Planning Agent Works

When you click Draft the plan, a dedicated planning step takes over. This is a more deliberate pass than the regular chat: it reviews your products and their photos, the shoot type, your Skills and Instructions, your Brand Memory, and your chosen fashion models, set locations, and perspectives, then writes out the plan.

The summary the agent replies with is the plan, so it's worth reading closely. It tells you what it is going to create for each product, which looks it built, and it will call out anything it noticed (for example a photo whose view type looks wrong, covered in the Products, View Types, and Mismatches section below).

You do not drive planning with a separate button. The chat is where planning happens: Draft the plan and Redo plan simply send the agent a starting message for you.

Skills and Instructions

Both live in the Inspector panel on the right, and both steer how the agent styles and completes your shots. They are not the same thing.

• Skills are reusable, team-wide styling rules (a short title plus a description, for example "always use two models" or "shoes are accessories, never the hero"). Once saved, a Skill applies to every relevant shoot automatically. Skills are journey-specific: a Skill written for campaigns is ignored on a Product Studio shoot and vice versa, so you never have to detach one before switching types. The agent can also offer to save a good one-off decision as a Skill mid-conversation, which is how your Skill library grows over time.
• Instructions are one-off, per-shoot notes. Use them for something that applies to this shoot only and shouldn't become a standing rule.

The shoot-type switch also lives in the Inspector.

How the agent decides styling

When the agent decides how to style and complete a look, it follows this order of priority, strongest first:

1. What you type in chat, and your batch Instructions. These win over everything else.
2. Your saved Skills.
3. Your Brand Memory. Used mainly to complete bare looks in your brand's spirit (for example, your staple white tee).
4. Brandmachine's built-in defaults.

Even with no Skills saved, sensible defaults already apply: every look is a complete, styled outfit rather than a lone garment (bare pieces are completed with neutral, unbranded basics); products are grouped by their filename convention; only the views your photos actually cover are shot (a missing view is never invented); accessories support the outfit unless the accessory is itself the key product; and each paired item stays consistent across every frame a product appears in. If a shot ever looks off-brand, check your Instructions and Skills first, since they override brand-level and default settings.

Two Ways to Change a Plan

There are two different ways to change a plan once one exists, and they behave very differently. Knowing which to use saves the most time.

• Ask for a specific change in chat. Tell the agent exactly what you want ("drop the cap from the denim look", "swap the model on frame 3"). It makes a targeted edit, changing only what you asked about. Everything else, including previews you have already reviewed, stays exactly as it was.
• Redo plan. This is a full reset. The agent discards every draft item and its previews, including any edits you made directly on the plan board, and drafts a fresh plan from your products, Skills, and Instructions. A confirm modal warns you first. Use it when you want to start the plan over, not for a small tweak.

In both cases, anything you have already generated as finals is never touched.

A couple of edits the agent will decline, with a plain explanation rather than an error: a look whose preview or generation is still running (wait a moment and retry), and a look that has already been generated as a final (that one is finished inventory, so edit it in Product Studio or start a fresh plan).

Products, View Types, and Mismatches

The upload section is called Products (previously "Product Images"). When you upload a photo, Brandmachine scans it and assigns a view type: Front, Back, Other, or Cropped. It also groups photos into products by their filename convention (for example TEE-01_front.jpg and TEE-01_back.jpg become one product).

What you upload here decides what the agent has to work with. See Input Guidelines for resolution, lighting and framing requirements.

Perspectives only render the views your photos actually cover. If a product has no back photo, the agent skips the back rather than inventing one.

If a view looks wrong, fix the tag before you build. If a front photo is scanned as "Other," the agent flags a view mismatch in its summary and will not pretend the view exists. The fix is quick: open that image, set the correct view type from the dropdown (Front, Back, Other, Cropped), then ask the agent to redo or adjust the plan. The agent cannot correct a mistagged view for you, it can only avoid faking it, so this is the first thing to check when a view you expected is missing.

Hero Products

For each look, the agent picks one hero product automatically at plan time, guided by your Skills and Instructions (for example "shoes are accessories, not heroes") or, if nothing applies, by choosing the look's key garment.

Hero only matters for perspectives set to Use Hero Inputs Only (packshot-style shots), which render only the hero product's images. All other perspectives (outfit and lifestyle shots) include every product regardless of the hero flag.

You can override the automatic choice afterward. MAKE HERO on the Product Studio detail page is a per-image correction, not the starting point. See Product Studio for the full hero workflow.

Reviewing the Plan

The review board has a Plan / Preview / Finals lens toggle, so you can flip between the drafted plan, generated previews, and finished finals in one place. Product Studio shoots add an Overview / Detailed density toggle for scanning many items at once. A progress header keeps a running count of how many items are planned, previewed, and generated.

Generating Previews and Finals

Once you're happy with the plan, two actions turn it into images. Each one opens a confirm modal stating the shot count and cost before anything runs.

• Generate previews: free, low-resolution, meant for review only, not releasable.
• Generate finals: full-resolution and releasable, costs credits.

Generate previews as many times as you like while you refine the plan, then generate finals only for the shots you're ready to pay for.

What to Expect: Campaign vs Product Studio

Campaign shoots. If you don't say how many frames you want, the agent proposes a varied set (around 8 to 12). If you do name a number, it produces exactly that many. Every frame is a distinct scene (a different setup, moment, or angle), never a repeat, and when you have more than one set location the frames spread across them.

Product Studio shoots. The number of images isn't a target you set. It's simply your products multiplied by the perspectives you choose, so the useful question is which views and perspectives you want, not how many images. Perspectives are the camera-angle and framing presets you configure in Product Studio settings; the agent picks from the ones your team already has, filtered to the views your photos cover.

One consistency rule applies to both: once the agent decides how to complete a bare garment (say, pairing a skirt with a plain neutral top), it reuses that exact pairing across every frame and perspective the product appears in, rather than varying it.

What Shot Planner Creates

Finals land in:

• Product Studio, for Product Studio shoots, where you review and finalize them in Workbench.
• Campaigns, for campaign shoots.

The shoot itself keeps its full history (plan, previews, and finals), so you always have a record of what it produced.

Inventory

Everything you generate is permanent inventory, not a temporary draft. Generated items:

• Survive a Redo plan on the same shoot, with favorites and releases preserved.
• Appear under the Finals lens as dated history, so you can look back at earlier rounds.

You do not need to start a new shoot to iterate. Redo the plan on the same shoot and keep working from there.

Before You Plan

The agent needs a few things in place before it can draft, and it will tell you what is missing rather than guessing:

• Product photos uploaded to the shoot.
• A fashion model. Shots are built around a model, so set one up in Fashion Models first.
• A set location, for campaign shoots. Create one in Set Locations.
• Perspectives, for Product Studio shoots. Configure these in Product Studio settings.

FAQs

What's the difference between messaging the agent and clicking Redo plan? A message asking for a specific change is a surgical edit: it touches only what you named and leaves everything else, including your previews, in place. Redo plan is a full reset that discards every draft and its previews (including edits you made on the board) and drafts a fresh plan. Your generated finals are safe either way.

A view I expected is missing. Why? Usually a view-type mismatch. Open the image, set the correct view type from the dropdown, then ask the agent to redo or adjust the plan. The agent will not invent a view your photos don't cover.

Who decides which product is the hero? The agent does, per look, at plan time, guided by your Skills and Instructions. You can override it per image later with MAKE HERO on the Product Studio detail page. Hero only affects "Use Hero Inputs Only" perspectives.

How long does planning take? Usually under a couple of minutes, but it can take up to a few minutes for large shoots. If you ever see a planning error and then find a plan appeared anyway, that can happen when the result lands just after the app stopped waiting. Refresh and check before redoing.

Can I switch a shoot between Product Studio and Campaign? Yes, from the shoot-type switch in the Inspector. Switching is non-destructive: it doesn't touch your existing plan. You'll be nudged to redo the plan so the shots match the new type, but nothing is wiped until you do.

Can I re-run a shoot, or do I need to start a new one? You can re-run it. Generated items are permanent inventory, so a Redo plan on the same shoot keeps your existing favorites and releases and adds the new plan on top. You don't need a new shoot to iterate.

Does Shot Planner cost credits? Drafting a plan and generating previews are both free. Generate finals costs credits based on the number of shots. See Billing & Credits for pricing.

For further help, contact support@brandmachine.shop.