Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture, including computer program products, are provided for synthesizing images for machine learning. The method may include selecting one or more image preprocessing transformations to apply on the foreground object image; applying the selected one or more image preprocessing transformations to the foreground object image; selecting a background image from a set of background images depicting a variety of different backgrounds which may be associated with the foreground object image; merging the selected background image with the foreground object image to form a synthesized image; selecting one or more image transformations to apply on the synthesized image; applying the selected one or more image transformations to the synthesized image; and storing the synthesized image in a collection of synthesized images to train a machine learning model.