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Match Option Photos from a PDF Catalog

If you already have a printed or PDF catalog with a photo next to each option — every door style, every stain color, every edge profile — you don't have to crop and upload those images one by one. TimberCloud's Catalog Photos matcher reads your PDF, pulls out the pictures, and uses AI to attach each one to the right attribute option. You review the matches and apply them.

This is one of the three live AI features in the Product Builder (alongside the AI Pricing Assistant and the AI Advisory generator).

Availability: Available on every plan (including Free) — the matcher lives in the Product Attributes area anyone who can edit products can reach. It requires the Manage Products permission.

What it does — and how it "reads" the photos

The matcher's key idea: identity is the printed text label, not the pixels. The AI doesn't try to recognize what a door or a wood grain "looks like." Instead, it reads the names printed in your catalog next to each image and matches those names to the option names you already created in your attribute. So a catalog page that prints "Shaker White" under a photo gets matched to the option you named "Shaker White."

That's why the matcher works so well for finishes, laminates, and door styles where the picture alone would be ambiguous — the label is doing the matching.

Note: Because matching is by name, your attribute options should be named the same way they appear in the catalog for the best results. Set up the attribute and its options first, then run the matcher.

Before you start

  1. Create the attribute and its options. The matcher attaches photos to options that already exist — it does not create new options. See Attributes.
  2. Have the PDF catalog ready — the one whose pages show each option with its name printed nearby.

Step by step

Step 1: Open Catalog Photos

Open your product in the Product Builder and go to the Setup tab. In the Product Attributes section, click Catalog Photos.

Step 2: Pick the attribute and upload the PDF

In the dialog:

  1. Choose the attribute to match from the dropdown. It shows how many options each attribute has, so you can confirm you picked the right one.
  2. Upload your PDF catalog.
  3. Click Match Photos.

TimberCloud extracts the images from the PDF and asks the AI to line them up with your option names. Large catalogs can take a minute.

Step 3: Review the matches

You'll see a grid — one tile per option in the attribute:

  • Options the AI found a photo for show a thumbnail and are pre-checked.
  • Options it couldn't find a photo for appear dimmed with a placeholder, so you can see exactly what's still missing.
  • A summary at the top tells you how many options matched out of how many, and how many images were pulled from the PDF.

Uncheck any match that looks wrong, or use Select All / Deselect All to work quickly. Only the checked options will get a photo.

Step 4: Apply

Click Apply ‹N› Photos. The photos are queued and uploaded in the background, so you can close the dialog and keep working — they'll appear on your options a moment later.

Tips and troubleshooting

Tip: If several options didn't match, the usual cause is a name mismatch between your options and the catalog. Rename the options to match the catalog's wording (or vice versa) and run the matcher again — it's safe to re-run.

  • No attributes to pick? You'll see a prompt to add attributes with options first. The matcher needs existing options to attach photos to.
  • A photo landed on the wrong option? Uncheck it in the review step before applying, then attach that one by hand, or fix the option name and re-run.
  • Photos didn't appear immediately? They upload in the background — give it a moment and refresh the attribute.

Next Steps

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