For optical retailers looking to launch a new eCommerce site or improve an existing one, high-quality product images of frames is a critical element to driving conversion.
Traditional photography is challenging for eyewear because of the reflective nature of the lenses, transparent acetate colors and tiny, and intricate details including embellishments, logos, and hinges.
Digital product imagery is evergreen, enabling you to make edits (color saturation, text, reflections, etc.) after the fact without needing to reshoot.
Ditto is helping leading retailers and brands create unlimited digital eyewear images for online stores without the need for high-end photography.
Not only does digital product imagery provide high-quality images that are superior in quality and clarity to traditional photography, but it’s also a valuable alternative during COVID-19 when in-person photo shoots with models and photographers are being put on hold.
With digital product imagery, you can composite eyeglasses onto models virtually, without the need for a shoot, and give your eCommerce store a competitive advantage.
What is Digital Product Imagery?
Digital product imagery, also known as rendered product imagery (RPI), are images rendered from a detailed, comprehensive pair of digital glasses (i.e. 3D virtual replicas of physical glasses made with 3D software).
Digital product imagery replaces traditional product photography for eCommerce, marketing, and other use cases.
The Benefits of Digital Product Imagery
Digital product imagery is superior to traditional photography in many ways including flexibility, positioning, effects, and functionality.
Flexibility
Digital product images are evergreen and enable edits without the need to reshoot the product. Common edits for eyewear include adjusting the saturation or brightness on the frame to better mimic how it looks while being worn on the face, removing text on the interior temple piece, adjusting reflections to showcase lenses, etc.
Glasses can be rendered on a white background, grey background, or with a custom background. You can pick the exact shadows you like and change the lighting to showcase various reflections. Other customizations are possible as well.
All image editing and adjustments are made digitally and there is no need for additional touch-ups, unlike traditional photography.
Positioning
Digital product imagery can be shown from different angles and perspectives which are simply not possible with traditional photography.
Digital product imagery can ensure symmetry on the temple pieces on a surface which can be hard to achieve in a real photoshoot.
Effects
Digital product imagery effects (i.e. reflectivity, transparency, shine, etc.) can be customized to your preferences. This is particularly helpful for sunglasses which can be difficult to photograph given the flash on the camera often reflects too brightly in the lense. This is why you often see an angled shot down. However, this angled down imagery makes it hard for customers to understand the accurate shape of the frame.
Functionality
Digital product imagery can be rendered on lifestyle images of models or animated for videos and more to create additional content needed to boost eCommerce conversions.
Additionally, digital product imagery can be used to support virtual try-on functionality on your site.
Digital Product Imagery vs. Traditional Photography Examples
Here are a few examples of how traditional photography compares to digital product imagery:
Original Photograph of Frames
- Metallic end-pieces get blown out by lighting.
- Lenses need a manual touch-up.
- No shadows.
- Temple’s end-pieces visible through the lens are at an awkwardly high angle to avoid a reflective flash in the lens. They are also asymmetrical.
Ditto’s Digital Product Imagery
- Fixed metallic color
- Consistent lens color
- Added shadows
Changed pose slightly so frames look like they’re on a table and symmetrical.
How Ditto Creates Digital Product Imagery
Ditto makes it simple to convert your frame photography into digital assets without the need to ship Ditto physical samples. Ditto’s digital product imagery is created from source photography as follows:
- 7 images per SKU (6 images around the SKU + 1 Top-down image)
- The images should reflect the coloring in which the RPI is to be produced.
With that, Ditto uses a proprietary process and toolkit to create the glasses in 3D. During this process, Ditto also extracts proprietary frame data that powers our Frame Recommendation offering.
What You Get From Ditto’s Digital Product Imagery Process
Ditto can provide 360-degree imagery as well as custom angles and additional shots. Some of the common examples we see include folded temples, frontal images, tile upright, 45 degrees left, top left, and top right images.
We can also render an animated video of the product turning and the temples bending. Here are a few examples:
Our digital product imagery is delivered in HD at 1920 x 1080 image size resolution. Alternatively, we offer imagery in 4K as well.
Our frame data as their source of truth for their back-end system, category page filters, SEO, and more.
Conclusion
The choice is clear between traditional photography and digital product imagery. Digital imagery results in the best option for product imagery because it showcases frames from any angle with better image quality and can be customized to suit your needs. The assets are evergreen and can be edited at any time without the need for reshoots. They can be superimposed on models as well as buyers during virtual try-on.
It is also an economical choice relative to expensive manual photograph retouching.
Whether you are preparing to launch your first site or exploring ways to improve your existing site’s performance, consider using digital product imagery instead of traditional photography to boost your conversion rates, and delight your customers.
To see Ditto’s digital product imagery in action, see a demo or schedule a call with us today.
