Get Started with the Square Photo Studio App
About the Square Photo Studio app
The Square Photo Studio app makes it easy to take professional-looking product photos in just a few simple steps. With your mobile device, you can snap a picture of your menu or retail item, select a photo style and edit the background color. Once finished, you can choose to sell the item online with a payment link or add it to your Square item catalog.
Before you begin
The Square Photo Studio app is free, and doesn’t require any in-app purchases or a website. While a Square Online account isn't required to use the app, you'll be prompted to create a Square account if you want to save photos, sync photos to Square items, or create a Square Payment Link.
For retail businesses, Square Photo Studio is accessible within the Square Retail POS app. To use Square Photo Studio with Square for Retail, your team members must have the Grant access to create and edit items permission enabled.
Using the Square Photo Studio app
To get started with the Square Photo Studio app:
- From your Square Photo Studio app, centre your item within the camera frame using the stabiliser icon.
- When the indicator turns yellow, tap the shutter button to capture your image.
- Tap Save to keep the photo or Retake to try again.
- Style your image, and choose to either set up a payment link or add it to your Square item catalogue.
When taking photos, you’ll get the best results by placing your item in an evenly lit area against a light background. If you plan on photographing many items, consider investing in an inexpensive lightbox. Oftentimes, you can quickly purchase one online.
Once you select a style preset, tap Edit to change the background colour, shadow, layout and levels.
- Shadows: choose between a drop and directional shadow, adjust the angle and change the intensity of the shadow.
- Layout: change the size of the item, rotate the item, position it in the frame or choose a different aspect ratio.
- Levels: use our auto-adjustment tool, or change the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows and saturation.
The Square Photo Studio app instantly removes the background from your pictures to allow for custom background styles. You can choose a preset style and optionally customise the colour, or use a transparent background. When editing your photo:
- tap on a background tile to preview it with your picture, then tap Edit to change the colour or scene. Note: the Edit option isn’t available if you select the transparent background tile.
- On the edit screen, choose from our colour palette or use the eyedropper to pick a custom colour. You can also enter your own hex code for a more precise colour selection, or choose from our background scene options.
- When you’ve selected a background, tap Next.
You can use the background remover to remove the background of your pictures. The background remover uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect the primary object in the picture and automatically removes the background. The AI tool does all the background removal editing work for you so you don’t need to take any additional steps. If there are any issues with removing the background, you can select Refine background and make adjustments by selecting Add or Remove.
Once the app removes the original background, you can use the photo with its transparent background, or add a crisp, white background for eCommerce use. Select from a variety of preset colour backgrounds for social media selling, choose a styled two-tone background or enter a specific hex code into the custom colour picker to get a background that perfectly matches your brand.
You can also choose from a curated selection of scenes to place your item on a realistic surface such as a tabletop. The app makes it easy to create a whole new image in seconds without having to retouch or resize.
You can create and sell items with your pictures directly from the Square Photo Studio app. Create a payment link for your item, or add it to your Square item catalogue to sell online or in-person. To start:
- shoot and edit your photo from the Square Photo Studio app.
- Tap Sell Now or Add to Square.
- Log in to your Square account or choose the signup option to create a Square account.
- Follow the prompts to finish setting up your payment link or catalogue item.
After creating a link, you can edit the item title, price or image at any time. You can also copy the payment link or embed code to add the payment link to an external website. To do so, go to your Square Payment Links page in your Square Dashboard.
Learn more about getting started with Square Payment Links for more information on payment links.
You can also save your pictures to your phone’s photo album or share them with others. To start:
- from the style screen in the Square Photo Studio app, tap Next > Save to Photos. You may need to allow the app permission to access your photo album.
- Tap Share to open your phone’s share menu and choose one of the options for sharing.
Saved file formats vary depending on the type of image format being saved. Images with backgrounds are saved as JPG files. Images with their backgrounds removed are saved as transparent PNG files.
You can also choose and edit photos from Instagram. Square’s Instagram integration makes it easy for you to import the photos from your Instagram feed into our app. To start:
- from your Square Photo Studio app, select Instagram at the bottom of your Photo Library.
- Log in to your Instagram account and select the image you’d like to use.
- Edit the photo as needed and add the image directly to Square.
If you don’t have time to prepare and photograph each item on your menu, you can add and customise photos of commonly sold items from our in-app library. To start:
- from your Square Photo Studio app, select Image Library to choose the image that best represents your menu item.
- Select Style to choose a background style, then tap Next.
- Tap Add to Square or Sell now to log in to your existing Square account or create a new one. These images are free to use with your Square item catalogue.