360 product photography is the latest trend in product and ecommerce industry. Sellers use this technology to show their products from all sides and make this item closer to the potential client.
360 degree product photography is made by a simple series of pictures that are taken at the intervals of several degrees and can be composed of both 8 and 360 photos taken while moving the subject to each degree.
Let’s find out how to do it with your DSLR and smartphone. If you want to make the same photo of your subject for your site, follow our instructions to do it yourself.
Product photography 360 degrees (also referred to as 360° photography, 360° spin, 360° packshot or spin photography) is a type of product content that allows you to capture and present products from different angles.
It is mainly used in e-shops, on product pages and social media wherever you want to give more information about the product and engage your customers.
You can go to the 360-product photography studio or make the photographs yourself. In the 360-product photography tutorial, you will find all the necessary information and instructions what you might need to do high-quality 360 photos yourself. You need to buy special equipment and learn how to do 360 product photography no worse than in the studio, make sure you have:
360 product photography turntables – must-have for taking 360 product photos.
Smartphone / DSLR camera – depending on how quality images you want to get.
Tripod for product photography – Convenient, compact tripod.
Lightbox for a 360 degree product photography – Background + lighting in one item.
White/Color Background – Obligatory for 360 product photography.
If you know how to take product photography and being engaged in this field for some time, you have probably collected 80% of must-have equipment. You just need to buy a product photography turntable.
In fact, it is not so difficult to get 360 degree product photography. There are only several steps to be followed. I took pictures both on the DSLR camera and on the iPhone fixed on a tripod.
I used the white background that was bundled with Lightbox. If you use lamps, then put them on both sides so that your area is as bright as possible. In the case you use a lightbox, simply turn on the light.
Set your panel for 360 product photography in the middle and plug it in. I use foldio360 and since the connection socket of foldio360 is at the front, it does not look very attractive, but the quality of the photos won’t be affected.
Run the foldio360 product photography application and connect to your panel. For this, run the Bluetooth and find the panel in the list of possible connections.
Place your phone or camera on a tripod as close to your object as possible, so that there is an inch of free space from the bottom of the subject in the frame. Thus, it will be easier to cut and place your image on a white background. If you photograph something that might reflect, (for example, if this object has a display or it is made of the reflective material such glass), place a sheet of paper or cloth in front of your camera to avoid unpleasant reflections.
If this has already happened, you need to retouch every photo with the reflection of your phone or camera. 360 product photography must be perfect.
Click on the 4 orange bars in the corner of the screen to select the application mode. There are only four of them:
Smartphone – in case you are going to take photos on the device from which you have started the 360 product photography app.
DSLR – if you want to take photos using a camera. Be careful – the color settings in the application do not work and the quality of the photos fully depends on your camera.
Video – in case you want to make a 360 video. The settings are the same. It is used rarely, but sometimes it is very useful. In such a mode only the smartphone camera is used.
Turntable Control – runs a “field” in which you can simply control your 360 product photography turntable. You can move it constantly to a certain degree. It is rather a useful feature in case your DSLR camera does not support wireless monitoring and you do not want to take photos on your smartphone.
If you decided to use a camera for shooting, adjust the settings first. My settings were as follows: 1/160, 22, ISO 100. Turn off the stabilization on the lens, which can greatly hinder the shooting. Select the DSLR mode we described in Step 5 and choose your camera from the list.
There are two versions of 360 cameras product photography. If there are some problems with Nikon1 for instance, Nikon 2 will definitely work. Take a test photo by tapping in the middle of the screen.
Select the smartphone by clicking on the four bars in the corner. Set your subject in the middle of the screen and align your tripod along the strip in the middle of the screen.
Set the correct white balance. I recommend leaving it at 0 point, or making -2, but no less. Adjust the exposure, set it no more than 10, you need everything around the object to turn white, but do not light the object itself, make sure that the outlines remain clear-cut.
Set the number of photos you want to take. The maximum number is 48. The more photos you choose, the smoother your object will rotate while 360 product photography scrolling.
Set the rotation speed of the panel. I recommend setting the speed to 1x, as this will increase the amount of shooting time only for a minute, but in this case, your camera will have time to capture the necessary frames.
Press start and do not touch the phone again until the end of shooting.
Upload all your photos to your computer and open any other photo editing program. Having finished the 360 product photo retouching, open the Spinzam site, go through a short registration and click the Upload button in the corner. Upload all your photos to the site. After the operation is finished, you will see your pictures on the site.
Click on the image of your subject in the corner, and then on the key icon. Here you can adjust the exposure, white balance, as well as crop the photo.
Click on the picture of your object in the corner. Your 360 photo is ready and you can rotate it. If you want, you can upload it to the cloud by clicking on the arrow in the rhombus or upload the archive to your computer by clicking on the arrow in the square.
Find in the list of your works on the site and choose the one you want. Click the Share button and copy the link to the code page of your site. Now you have a photo of your product on the site.
It was necessary to spend much more time and effort to make 360 product photography. And to buy an application, it was required to pay the reasonably large amount. Now you can find many 360 product photography software free in the network.
Foldio360 is a free application for your smartphone and is the best application I've seen to create 360 degree product photography because you connect to your platform via Bluetooth, configure the camera, click on the descent and your 360 degree photography product is already ready.
Also, the guys from OrangeMonkie offer a web version of this program in a network called Spinzam which is now in the beta state, but it allows you to download your photos for free and create 360 product photography.
Sirv can compete with Spinzam regarding providing services to create 360 degree product photography. They have both paid and free services. Sirv works very fast, you just need to upload photos to their site, and in a few seconds you get product 360 photography. Sirv at once gives a link to your 360 product photography, and you can post it on your site, so you do not need to look for it anywhere.
Webrotate360 is free program for creating 360 product photography. Unlike the first three, it comes with a desktop publisher that you need to install on your computer first. With this software the images are published on your hard-drive and you can then upload them anywhere you like.
It instantly creates 360 degree product photography and most importantly it allows you to edit your project later as the image processing is non-destructive. Handy utilities for background removal on all images at once is another advantage of this program.
Magazine editing of the objects for 360 product photography is a very difficult job, not even difficult, but a long one. In the video, I do pro retouch of one of the 24 photos.
STEP 1. First of all, I do is color correction, add contrast, brightness, and saturation of the photo. I correct the white balance in Camera Raw.
STEP 2. Then, using the Clipping & Path technique, I cut out the object on a white background. Now, the background is monochromatic.
STEP 3. Like I said – the screen reflected everything that was in front of it – the camera, lightbox and my room. To improve the image, you need to make it completely black, using a brush. Be attentive not to go over the edges to keep the look natural of the screen.
STEP 4. It is necessary to remove small dust particles, rubs and glare from the object.
STEP 5. Add color saturation. Done.
You’ve probably noticed how often this kind of photos does not occur in the web sites like Amazon or Ebay. The fact is that these platforms still, like many e-commerce websites do not support iframe code that gives out most of the services and programs for creating 360 product photos. The way out is to create Gif or MP4 files to upload them to these e-commerce websites.
STEP 1. Click on the Image Upload button at the bottom of the screen when opening your image in the Foldio360 application.
STEP 2. Click on the “Data export” and after a few seconds you will receive the archive that you need to transfer to your computer.
STEP 3. After opening the archive you will get ready-made .gif, .jpg and mp4 files. If you used a DSLR, then you would need other free online GIF makers.
In fact, this kind of product photography is not only a beautiful view of your goods, this is one way to increase your sales. So, why do you need it?
It helps reduce the number of products returns, since buyers will perfectly consider every detail of your good from all its sides that are difficult to see after simple photography.
How many sellers have 360 product photos in their catalogs? The answer is small! You show yourself as a professional seller who cares about what the product looks like, what first impression it will have and how well a person will study the goods before buying it.
If we compare 360 photos with videos, then according to statistics we found out that the buyer most often chooses the goods with 360 photos, because people like to control the examination of the goods themselves, study it and stop it when they want to consider any detail. If the video needs to be stopped to review, then with 360 photos everything is much easier.
If you buy Foldio360 Orangemonkie light box, turntable and software, you buy a ready-made small studio for your product photography. You don’t have to ask freelance photographers to do it, you just turn it on and make beautiful photos even on your smartphone.
At home you can take 360 product photography only for small goods like jewellery, shoes, equipment, toys, and statuettes. If you want to take photos of cars or furniture, you can use a big turntable or just draw a 3D model.
After taking a 360 photo, the software lets you download the code. You can insert it and publish on your website only. Yes, you can use 360 product photos on Amazon, eBay, Instagram, ETSY, but as a .gif or .MP4 file. It means you can’t rotate it on these websites, watch as a video – which is a big minus.
Many sellers start using this kind of showing their goods on Amazon and eBay. It helps raise sales twice in several months. A product without 360 view looks dull and simple. How to show that namely your product must be bought? Try 360 product photography.
