Product Photoshoots with PhotoRobot
Chapters
00:00:04
Introduction & Object Selection
00:00:28
Setup & Background Removal
00:01:00
Scan-in & Robot Arm Control
00:01:25
Image Capture & Management
00:01:50
Cloud Processing & Publishing
Summary
This video demonstration of the PhotoRobot production workflow showcases high speeds of capture, post-processing, and publishing. Watch as we photograph, post-process, and publish images of 3 products online in under 3 minutes. Each product presents different challenges for tabletop photography, with their own unique photographic requirements. The first is a standard procedure, producing 360 spin photography of an orange suede high-heel shoe. Then, we photograph a wire basket, which poses its own complex challenges. The internal areas require masking, but at the same time have shiny edges. PhotoRobot solves these issues remarkably, however. The third production example is then a shampoo bottle, which also perfectly captures the text on the bottle. This is thanks to the high resolution of the original image files together with PhotoRobot’s built-in OCR reader. All text displays just as the OCR function reads it. Other key functionalities include our non-stop spin feature, which enables high-speed image capture. There is seamless integration of automated features such as barcode scanning, object dimensioning, and automated metadata assignment. These features together with cloud backup and automated processing ensure both user-friendly production, and smooth workflows.
Transcript
00:03 Hi. Today, we'll show you how fast and easy it is to make great 360s of these 3 products with PhotoRobot. We didn't pick the objects randomly. For example: this shoe, a very simple object, very simple shape. And the suede surface will look very vivid and crisp thanks to the fact that we use strobes unlike almost everybody else. Then we have this tray which is far from simple. All these holes in the middle. When we're removing background, you might be afraid that part of the objects are going to get removed
00:33 along with the background, but that's not going to happen. You'll see. We'll show you. And then we have this shampoo, which is white, so we can demonstrate how we can photograph white on white. And there is lots of text on it so we can go ahead and read that with our OCR feature. Let's have a look. We have already imported a target-list of the products we want to photograph, and assigned presets to them. We'll show you how to do that in another video. Now, I can just scan the barcodes of the products so that the software knows which item we are about to photograph.
01:05 I can weigh and measure the object on our _CubiScan-325. The robotic arm, which we are using today, uses these measurements to set the camera at the correct height. I know exactly where to place the shoot, thanks to the laser cross, which will be turned off automatically during the photography sequence. I can just scan the barcode, and the photography sequence begins. I don't even have to touch my computer. Thanks to our non-stop spin feature, it will only take about 20 seconds to take 36 images of the shoe.
01:32 While this is happening, we check the position of the turntable a thousand times per second, and we send the signals to the camera several milliseconds ahead of the time. That way we can be sure we're taking the images from exactly the right angles. By this time, all of the images have been captured and uploaded to the cloud. From there, they can immediately be published using a secure, encrypted feed. More often than not, you'll want to edit the images in some way, such as cropping, centring or background removal.
02:00 This is made easy by our automated post-processing. And of course, these settings can be stored in presets as well. It's all happening in the cloud, in the background. So I don't have to worry about that, and I can place another object on the turntable. This time we are using a different capturing method called free-masking. We take two images from the same angle, one with just the backlight. This creates a silhouette of the object, also called the mask, which is used to cut out the object from the background.
02:26 This makes it possible to make the background transparent, enabling us to change the background colour to better fit the surrounding webpage. Now we can take the pictures of this shampoo. I have deliberately placed the sample off-centre only to show you that this can be fixed in post using our unique centring feature. You can also see how PhotoRobot handles white-on-white. Because both the processed and the original images are stored in the cloud, I can adjust the settings any time I want on another computer. For example here,
02:58 I am using our unique OCR feature. And this is how easy it is! And it doesn't really matter whether you're doing tabletop photography of smaller objects, perhaps fashion on a mannequin, or maybe even large objects such as a car, the principles are always the same. And so is the quality. So get in touch with us and let us discuss what PhotoRobot can do for your business. Thank you for watching.
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