Canva Pro - Photos of People as 'Placeholder' Images for Customer to Replace?

[Marblewave]

Hi all,

I have signed up to Canva Pro and have been using it to create mockups for products and collections on Zazzle.

I would like to know whether Canva allow us to use their photographs of people, to use as ‘Placeholder’ images, on pictures of Zazzle products for sale, which the customer replaces with their own photo before purchasing the item.

I asked Canva support and they sent me various links to policies, but I still don’t know the answer to the above.

When they use the terms ‘mockup’ and ‘template’ I’m not sure whether they are referring to mockups of actual products, or mockups of the surroundings of the product ‘in situ’, or templates such as invitation layouts from Canva’s site, or what Zazzle calls templates where a customer replaces a picture with their own.

Can anyone kindly help with this please?

[LMGildersleeve]

In simple terms no, you can not use their photos of people as placeholders for your Zazzle products. The fact is, you can’t download any of their single images to your own computer “as is”. It’s against their policy to take individual photos (whether they be people or templates etc.) from their inventory to download them on your computer.

[KeeganCreations]

Precisely one year ago, the very first thread on AI images was started (thanks Cat). It was all about attempts to generate faux “photos” of people to use for template images. The AI (DALL E in its original form) was terrible at it.

A year has passed and now AI image generators are quite good at generating faux “photos” of people to use as template photos. I would give that a spin. AI still isn’t good at groups of people but for 1-3 people it is just fine.

[Marblewave]

@LMGildersleeve  

Thank you for your clear reply, it definitely helps to make sense of it all.

[Marblewave]

Thank you, @KeegansCreation . I will definitely give AI a go, for creating placeholder images of people. I just want to get this right, with the correct licensing etc, but am finding it rather a minefield!

[Cat_Ritchie]

AI is better than it was, but it’s still no panacea. If you’re gonna try AI for placeholder people I’d advise using StarryAI or Stable Diffusion - and try to get it to give you images without any hands… like tell it you want their hands in their pockets, or wearing mittens, or something like that because it’s rare for an AI generated person to have the correct number of fingers!

There may be other AI platforms that do a decent job, but those are the only two that I’ve had success with. My original attempts were using DALL-E, and while people generated by DALL-E have improved, they still tend to look a bit like something from a bad horror movie! However, DALL-E’s outpainting feature can be useful for doing touch ups and/or for expanding the backgrounds if you get a decent picture from a different platform with a mangled hand, or someone’s head cut off, or not centered or something. 

I’ve been able to get some useable stuff - but it does take work both in terms of learning how to give it the right cues, and also editing them by hand afterwards - I’ve yet to get anything AI generated that’s useable as is - all of these have several hours of post-generation work put into them. Sort of a pain, but I guess it’s good in that means nobody else is gonna be able to get it to dump out the exact same image. I wonder what that means in terms of copyright… hmmm… but I digress.

Anyhow, here are a few examples:

Placeholder image generated by Stable Diffusion. The original image was not centered and didn’t have enough background, plus there were a few extra arms in there, so it was edited extensively with DALL-E and also by hand, and enlarged using Topaz

Blessed Sparkle Frame with Names Christmas
by ZingerBug

These two were both generated by StarryAI and edited with both DALL-E and by hand, and enlarged with Topaz

This one originally had both the man and woman with cut off heads, plus there were a few mangled hands that needed to be covered up/fixed.

Merry Christmas Festive Sparkles Photo Overlay
by ZingerBug

This one had mangled hands, tops of heads cut off, and not enough background, but I managed to make it useable with both DALL-E and some hand editing.

Merry Christmas Festive Stars Photo Overlay
by ZingerBug

[leartiste67]

Nice designs, I like  using leonardo.ai  and medibangpaint for all the tweaks of my b&w ai art, I’ve got some Kwanzaa designs on my shop.

[Marblewave]

Thank you so much, Cat!  That’s all really helpful.  It’s certainly interesting to see the way AI is going.  I have been trying out your suggestions.  I’ve had a few bizarre results (unfinished faces, arms which morph into items of clothing) but some pretty good and useable ones too. Thanks again!

[Connie]

If you have to go through all that trouble to get placeholder images, I’d much rather just download them from Deposit Photos!