Extreme difficulty with variable products

@jharper01 there are some photography themes and plugins which are designed for photographers selling prints. That might work better for your solution.

As far as how Woo works with variations: a specific value will ALWAYS override a group value. So “any photo, size A4” is supposed to be overridden by “photo 1, size A4”. The “photo 1, size A4” is more specific, so should override.

If you want things to get rather fancy and programmatically set certain values, then you’ll need to hook into some of the PHP functions. There are PHP functions which run on every save.

For example, here is a function I wrote which won’t allow a product to be published unless a featured image is set. Similar types of functions can be written to automatically set values, but you need to know PHP or hire someone who does.

/***********************************
 * Require image to publish product
 ***********************************/
function on_all_status_transitions( $new_status, $old_status, $post ) {

    /* If new status is publish and post type is product, then require featured image */
    if ( $new_status == 'publish' && !empty($post->ID) && in_array( $post->post_type, array( 'product') ) ) {
        if( ! has_post_thumbnail($post) ) {
            $post->post_status = 'draft';

            // unhook this function so it doesn't loop infinitely
            remove_action('transition_post_status',  'on_all_status_transitions' );

            wp_update_post($post);

            // re-hook this function
            add_action('transition_post_status',  'on_all_status_transitions', 10, 3 );
        }
    }
}
add_action(  'transition_post_status',  'on_all_status_transitions', 10, 3 );