Previous
Beyond the Price: PhotoRobot’s Value to Product Photography
Discover PhotoRobot solutions for grocery product photography, optical character recognition (OCR), and photographing packaged products with labels.
Certain grocery product photography can provide challenges. This is particularly true when photographing rounded, packaged products with labels. Often, these are products that come in cans or jars, with text wrapping around the areas you need to photograph.
Thankfully, PhotoRobot can photograph groceries and other packaged products with labels extremely quick and easy. PhotoRobot can even read text on the packaging, flatten it out into straight lines, and allow you to pick and choose which text to showcase.
Just have a quick watch of the video above. Here, you see how PhotoRobot’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) perfectly reads text even as it wraps around the object. You can also see how OCR is just one among many of PhotoRobot’s advanced software functions.
In this post, we’ll help you learn more about PhotoRobot’s OCR, grocery product photography, and photographing packaged products.
A “larger” photoshoot day for PhotoRobot means capturing approximately 500 products in an 8-hour shift. This might sound like a tall order, and it certainly can be. For PhotoRobot, however, it just brings us to our favorite game, “each product online in under one minute”.
In fact, you see in the video just how much PhotoRobot can accomplish in 1 minute. In this case, we are able to control, automate, and manage:
PhotoRobot automated product photography systems are even designed to help us streamline workflows, including: sorting, transport, and distribution of products.
Again, within 1 minute, PhotoRobot rotates the object, and places the camera at the right height and selected view. The rotation of the machine in fact never pauses as the cameras trigger. PhotoRobot just freezes the movement of the grocery product at the right time.
Images are then automatically downloaded to the computer. Take it a step further, and you can send your images directly to the cloud as we do in the video. This allows us to automate our processing, and also to begin quicker on our next product for photography.
Text recognition, as with PhotoRobot’s OCR feature, can be very useful for grocery product photography. It’s especially so when photographing grocery products like packaged goods, cans, jars, and other rounded objects with labels that also need to be read.
This is great for getting nutrition facts onto your webpage. Maybe you want to validate information you receive from suppliers. This is where OCR becomes a valuable product photography solution.
Also, notice in the video how with the smaller diameter of the can, the more distortion you get in the text. It makes the text nearly impossible to read, but with PhotoRobot’s “unwrap” tool this is no problem. Our “unwrap” makes the can distorted while perfectly straightening out the text.
Use this straightened text as a separate product image, or you can apply our OCR feature in one quick click. OCR then immediately provides you with the full transcription of the text.
Next, our OCR feature also allows you to add labels to each piece of text. This helps us structure the text and decide which parts to keep. You might for example only want to showcase parts of the text, or you might want to ensure the majority of it is readable is your product photos.
All of this extracted text can be exported in JSON or XML feeds, the same ones you’re using for your automated delivery of image content. This is PhotoRobot’s signature “Set and Forget” trademark, and is just one among many of the unique features which set us apart from the competition.
PhotoRobot’s OCR tool can recognize roughly 100 different languages, most likely including yours. After all, we pride ourselves in being a global supplier of product photography solutions, and we aim to be as inclusive and versatile as possible for our growing list of clients worldwide.
Grocery product photography and photographing packaged products doesn’t get any easier or quicker than it is with PhotoRobot. We manufacture a diverse line of product photography solutions, from the hardware to the software for complete control and automation.
In addition, our cutting edge photography solutions and software gives you the ability to create interactive 360 photos, 3D animations, and impressive product videos. PhotoRobot systems are perfect for beginner and expert photographers alike, from small webshops to industrial scale photography operations.
To learn more, simply contact PhotoRobot today to discover our solutions for yourself. Schedule a 1:1 consultation with one of our technical strategists, and we’ll help you find the perfect tools for your grocery product photography and more.
