Flat-lay / marketplace

A top-down arrangement of the product with related objects — organised, symmetrical, and shot straight down.

When to use it

Beauty, fashion, food, stationery and gifting, and any range where showing several items together is the point. It is also a strong format for a bundle or a kit.

The thing to get right

Everything in the frame should belong to the story. Filler props read as clutter from above, where there is no depth to push them into the background.

The format at a glance

• Output — a still image ad.
• Structure — a single frame, with the copy composited on top.
• Family — Product photography.
• Recipe id — flat_lay, which is what you name when you ask for it by hand or from an agent.

What belongs in the frame besides the product?

Only objects that are part of the story. Shot straight down there is no depth to push filler into, so anything that does not belong reads as clutter rather than settling into the background.

Related formats

Commerce imagery built from your real packshot — studio hero shots, in-use lifestyle frames, flat-lays and marketplace listing images.

• Studio product shot — a clean studio hero photo of the product (e-commerce/premium)
• Lifestyle / in-use — the product in an authentic real-world, in-use setting
• UGC-style photo — a candid, phone-camera, real-person photo (feels organic, not an ad)
• Marketplace listing — a clean white-background marketplace/Amazon listing hero with callouts

The full catalog is on the creative recipes index.

Hermoso plans and renders a flat-lay / marketplace from your brand rather than from a prompt you write, composites every on-screen word after the render so the copy comes out exact, and exposes the same format to an AI agent over MCP. How Hermoso renders a format covers all three.