PKR
Mentor
I guess many saw this coming. I wonder how it does with highly reflective surfaces and glassware?
When a Phone Won’t Cut It, Now You Can Hire a Robot Photographer
The rise of online shopping has uncovered an unexpected problem: Taking good pictures of products isn’t easy.
By Julie Verhage
July 22, 2019 5:30 AM PDT
Carolyn Bessette is good at making soap. So good that people pay $8 for a bar of Farm to Shower Peppermint Watermelon or Hopi Blue Corn handmade soap through her website. What she’s not good at, however, is photographing soap. “I tried doing it myself, and it was just awful,” she said.
The 52-year-old entrepreneur and her husband run Dr. Bessette Naturals. In addition to their online store, they have a location at a farmer’s market in Boston, where customers can browse all-natural skincare products. In March, the company that makes their cash register, Square Inc., approached the couple asking if they’d like to try a new product-photography service the company was testing. The cameraman, they learned, was a robot.
Before the rise of online shopping, photographing inanimate objects wouldn’t have been a logical growth opportunity for a global payments business with a market value of $33 billion. But Square thinks there are enough store owners with a bad eye for photography that it spent more than $20,000 on a robot and devoted 1,000 square feet to the project in a New York warehouse sandwiched between Table 87 and Avocaderia, two hot restaurants in Industry City, Brooklyn.
Square plans to announce Monday that it’s beginning to take orders from anyone in the U.S. for mechanically snapped photos. It will charge about $10 plus shipping for customers to send a product weighing less than 20 pounds to the Brooklyn studio and within two weeks, receive three digital photos from different angles. (Staff will select the best ones for customers.) Square also offers a 360-degree photo service for about $30 apiece.
While Square said the service is cheaper than many professional photographers, it’s also competing with the phone in people’s pockets. David Rusenko, the general manager of e-commerce at Square, said he tells shopkeepers that enchanting photos are crucial to selling on the web, when shoppers can’t pick up or try things on. “When you buy something online, all you have are product photos,” he said.
Jack Dorsey, the Twitter Inc. co-founder, started Square a decade ago with a Chiclet-size device that can process a credit card swipe through an iPhone. The company now sells touchscreen cash registers, small-business loans, payroll software and website-building tools. The stock is up 40% this year as the company looks to break into more aspects of the retail business.
Catering to the needs of online sellers is a booming business. More than half of sales on Amazon.com Inc.’s website go to independent sellers on the marketplace. Amazon sells them advertising services, cloud hosting and a $100 AmazonBasics Portable Photo Studio, which offers a pristine white environment for shooting product photos that can fold up like a massage table. Shopify Inc. sells software to create and manage online stores, as well as stock photography to make them pretty. The Canadian company’s stock has doubled over the last six months
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...her-snaps-products-at-a-warehouse-in-brooklyn
When a Phone Won’t Cut It, Now You Can Hire a Robot Photographer
The rise of online shopping has uncovered an unexpected problem: Taking good pictures of products isn’t easy.
By Julie Verhage
July 22, 2019 5:30 AM PDT
Carolyn Bessette is good at making soap. So good that people pay $8 for a bar of Farm to Shower Peppermint Watermelon or Hopi Blue Corn handmade soap through her website. What she’s not good at, however, is photographing soap. “I tried doing it myself, and it was just awful,” she said.
The 52-year-old entrepreneur and her husband run Dr. Bessette Naturals. In addition to their online store, they have a location at a farmer’s market in Boston, where customers can browse all-natural skincare products. In March, the company that makes their cash register, Square Inc., approached the couple asking if they’d like to try a new product-photography service the company was testing. The cameraman, they learned, was a robot.
Before the rise of online shopping, photographing inanimate objects wouldn’t have been a logical growth opportunity for a global payments business with a market value of $33 billion. But Square thinks there are enough store owners with a bad eye for photography that it spent more than $20,000 on a robot and devoted 1,000 square feet to the project in a New York warehouse sandwiched between Table 87 and Avocaderia, two hot restaurants in Industry City, Brooklyn.
Square plans to announce Monday that it’s beginning to take orders from anyone in the U.S. for mechanically snapped photos. It will charge about $10 plus shipping for customers to send a product weighing less than 20 pounds to the Brooklyn studio and within two weeks, receive three digital photos from different angles. (Staff will select the best ones for customers.) Square also offers a 360-degree photo service for about $30 apiece.
While Square said the service is cheaper than many professional photographers, it’s also competing with the phone in people’s pockets. David Rusenko, the general manager of e-commerce at Square, said he tells shopkeepers that enchanting photos are crucial to selling on the web, when shoppers can’t pick up or try things on. “When you buy something online, all you have are product photos,” he said.
Jack Dorsey, the Twitter Inc. co-founder, started Square a decade ago with a Chiclet-size device that can process a credit card swipe through an iPhone. The company now sells touchscreen cash registers, small-business loans, payroll software and website-building tools. The stock is up 40% this year as the company looks to break into more aspects of the retail business.
Catering to the needs of online sellers is a booming business. More than half of sales on Amazon.com Inc.’s website go to independent sellers on the marketplace. Amazon sells them advertising services, cloud hosting and a $100 AmazonBasics Portable Photo Studio, which offers a pristine white environment for shooting product photos that can fold up like a massage table. Shopify Inc. sells software to create and manage online stores, as well as stock photography to make them pretty. The Canadian company’s stock has doubled over the last six months
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...her-snaps-products-at-a-warehouse-in-brooklyn
jvo
Established
flash - the NEXT big breakthrough - Robot Buyers! no human intervention, no grubby fingers on your product!
retinax
Well-known
Steve M.
Mentor
Sounds OK to me. I'm sure it's been around since the 60's and 70's, as everything from that fertile time period seems to be constantly reintroduced, re-imagined, and recycled.
This made me laugh...."Despite the technical novelty, humans are essential to the process. John O’Brien-Carelli, the product manager for the project, said his team has to unpack the items, set each one on the table, activate the robot using a nearby computer and oversee the rest of the process. Customizing the robot’s settings to each product is one of the most time-consuming aspects, he said. Then they have to pack everything up and ship it back."
So, if you have to do all that AND program the stupid robot, why not just click the shutter yourself from those three sacrosanct angles? Ha! Either I'm getting smarter every day, which is doubtful, or the world is turning into Idioacracy in front of our very eyes. My money's on the latter.
This made me laugh...."Despite the technical novelty, humans are essential to the process. John O’Brien-Carelli, the product manager for the project, said his team has to unpack the items, set each one on the table, activate the robot using a nearby computer and oversee the rest of the process. Customizing the robot’s settings to each product is one of the most time-consuming aspects, he said. Then they have to pack everything up and ship it back."
So, if you have to do all that AND program the stupid robot, why not just click the shutter yourself from those three sacrosanct angles? Ha! Either I'm getting smarter every day, which is doubtful, or the world is turning into Idioacracy in front of our very eyes. My money's on the latter.
PRJ
Another Day in Paradise
I looked at their website. They should have hired a professional...
Huss
Mentor
Not many people know this but our Head Bartender “Stephen” is a robot.
If you take the word “Cameraquest”, remove some letters,add some other ones and rearrange them it spells out “bow down to your robot overlords”.
If you take the word “Cameraquest”, remove some letters,add some other ones and rearrange them it spells out “bow down to your robot overlords”.
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
So. Your Canadian driven eStore has 200 items. It is 2000 $ to get 3 pictures for each item taken by Smart Pants robot which takes time to set up every time object has changed.
The only way Smart Pants will make it - get it with AI and database. To recognize the object automatically and recall matching setting.
By now this setup looks like semi-automatic and lousy. They don't even have light box.
The only way Smart Pants will make it - get it with AI and database. To recognize the object automatically and recall matching setting.
By now this setup looks like semi-automatic and lousy. They don't even have light box.
Bill Clark
Mentor
How about making photographs isn’t easy. Not until a person gets the basics down.
Snaps, which a see a lot of, that’s another story.
RichC
Well-known
<grin> .