Preparing a source photograph

Why upload a photograph at all

Without a photograph the model generates an object from your category — a handsome backpack, but not the one in your warehouse. With one it holds your item: that colour, that zip, that shape. For a listing where the customer receives exactly what they saw, that is not cosmetic; it is the difference between material you can use and material you throw away.

Not every engine can do it. Some take no photograph at all, some take one, and a few take ten or fourteen. Each model page states it in the spec table, so before you start assembling photographs, check how many the engine you picked will accept.

Four things that make the difference

1. 1Put the product by a window, in the shade rather than in direct sun. Diffused light leaves no hard shadow, and a hard shadow is what most often spoils the result.
2. 2Use a plain, even background. A sheet of paper, a wall, an unpatterned counter. The less background there is to remove, the less the model invents at the product edge.
3. 3Focus on the product and frame it whole, with room around it. A cropped edge gets reconstructed from guesswork.
4. 4Turn off the flash and any camera filters. Glare and exaggerated saturation stay in the file and come back in every generated frame.

How many photographs, and from which sides

One good photograph is enough to change a background and for a simple shoot. A set is worth assembling in two situations: when the camera in a clip travels all the way round the product, and when you are producing a run of graphics that has to stay on the same item.

• Three or four views: front, back and one flank. That covers most products.
• Photograph the sides that will be visible. Supplying the back of the packaging as a photograph is cheaper than fixing a finished clip.
• Keep one lighting setup across the whole set. Photographs taken at different times of day give the model contradictory information about colour.
• A 3D model needs only one photograph, but Rodin Gen-2.5 is the only engine that takes four — and it is only good with four.

File size on the way out

The source photograph is one thing; the file that goes on a listing is another. It is worth knowing the limits of the platform the material is headed for, because those decide the format rather than any setting in the app.

Allegro scales anything larger than 2560 px down proportionally, so rendering above that for the listing itself achieves nothing. Go higher only when you are cutting smaller formats out of the same frame. Check the requirements at source — Allegro’s image rules change more often than this article does.