Ideas or advice on massive variation images

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Hi,

I am a first time business owner and decided to try fitness apparel. My idea was to add design color variation to promote individuality. During this process I found out that in order to show the customer what they are ordering I would have to create a variation image for each combination. Once I figured out (4 different shirt types, 8 colors each, 21 design options, and 10 design color options) how many images would have to be created, I couldn’t help but think that there has to be a better way. I searched google, these forums, and plugins but couldn’t find something to help me out. Anyone know of a way to reduce the thousands of variation combinations?

I was thinking that there would be a plugin that provides a mask over a shirt template, only changing the layer that I decide. This would allow me to only need a few images. It seems that I am either overlooking it or that something like that doesn’t exist. I hope this forum will be able to steer me in the right direction.