thread Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images! in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

Tom — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 20:20:06 GMT

✨ Be your own food stylist with the help of Square Photo Studio! ✨

We were thrilled to welcome back @johnobc from the Square Photo Studio team for another Question & Answer event for restaurant, bar, and food industry businesses August 31.

Here are just a few of the latest feature improvements on the Square Photo Studio app for specifically for food & beverage:

Real-time object detection to help guide high-quality images
Access to Square's proprietary library of 1500+ common food & beverage items which you can add to your menus
Textured backgrounds like wood and marble to help your items stand out

For more information on how to get the most out of these new features, have a look below for a summary and check out his team's last Q&A.

Note: We can't share specific details on our product roadmaps, though this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

mikeysal — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 20:29:27 GMT

When are you going to release an Android Square Studio Photo app?

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

TobaccoLeaf — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 16:08:45 GMT

Better object detection and filters. WE NEED AN ANDROID APP!

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

debinnnc — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 17:36:02 GMT

I like the idea of having access to food and beverage photos, but I sell natural body care products. Is there any possibility of having access to soaps, scrubs, lotions and things like that?

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

TheZaar — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 20:33:22 GMT

The iPhone was "born" in 2007. The iPad was "born" 3 years later. You've designed your photo app for the iPhone, and loading it onto an iPad simply puts an iPhone-size screen on the iPad. Any thoughts on when the app will be reformatted for the iPhone's younger brother?

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

jamierickson — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 14:35:17 GMT

How do I reduce the glare on my glass jars of salsa?

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

DentedBrick — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:41:40 GMT

Why have you alienated 71% of all cell phone users by leaving out the Android user community? Sure apple has great branding but they only hold a 27% market share of all users. Is it because the developers see it as a status symbol since they are so expensive (over priced) and you don't get much tech wise for your money? google pixel, samsung, etc., all have higher end-hardware, better resolution, better optics, faster processors, more memory. What is the developer rational on the process of this application by limiting it to only ios?

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

vinesandrushes — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 19:04:37 GMT

One of the challenges I have with photos is taking wine bottle shots in a photo booth and then editing out the white background so the background is transparent. Square photo studio didn't quite work but maybe thins have been refined - I'll take another look.

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

Sweetpiedessert — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 19:10:21 GMT

Just need the Android app.

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

GourmetOnWheels — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 02:42:31 GMT

@Tom The app needs a lot of work, when I take pictures of jars it cuts of the top or a side, both in Food and Non Food

Plus the editing of the pictures is still a lot easier to save the picture to the camera roll and then edit it on the iPhone.

René

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

Donnie-M — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:28:43 GMT

What are the plans to allow fine edge editing (like a blow up screen) for hard to cut out items?

Has the team thought about being able to use the photo studio as a way to take specific item images or edits like item grids/favicons?

Last but not least, how tight of integration are we going to get to have a photo library associated directly with our account versus uploading new images that are only stored associated with an item?

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

JUYBoutique20 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 17:50:48 GMT

Android release?

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

TobaccoLeaf — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 13:30:25 GMT

Need to get an Android App and better algo for hard edges.

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

WineCurmudgeon — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 17:11:09 GMT

According to Techjury for 2022:

Android is the most used OS in the world.

Even Windows lags behind the widespread adoption of the functional smartphone platform owned by Google. iOS is not even close.

When it comes to mobile devices, Apple has gained some ground over the last couple of years but Android still powers about 75% of all smartphones and tablets.

When are you going to release an Android version is a good question.

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

vinesandrushes — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:07:22 GMT

Fine edge editing is the key for it being useful for wine bottle pictures for me.

Re: Q&A: Learn how to create high-quality menu images with Square Photo Studio!

vinesandrushes — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:07:50 GMT

What's Android? 😆

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

johnobc — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 20:02:38 GMT

@WineCurmudgeon @mikeysal

Unfortunately we still don’t have a timeline for an Android version of the app. Here’s my answer from the Q&A in April for reference - the same is still true:

First, I want to thank all the Android users for participating in this Q&A and for asking this question.

The answer is that we will hopefully have an Android version of this app, we absolutely hear the requests, but we do not have a timeframe yet. To give more context, the app was built off the foundation of an existing iPhone app that Square acquired in 2021. The app we acquired was iPhone only so there were a lot of features that are included in our Photo Studio app that were built specifically for iPhones - like the machine learning model we use for background removal. We definitely want to release an Android version but it will take us time since we don’t have the same foundation to build off of and will basically be starting from scratch. Hopefully this helps explain why we don’t have an Android version yet since this is our top request but we want everyone to know we hear you!

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

johnobc — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 20:03:21 GMT

With the most recent release, we did update the background removal model pretty substantially. It works quite a bit better and now also works for food & beverage photos (in the past it removed white plates.) In my view, this is probably the biggest upgrade we’ve made to the app since launch and I’m continually impressed with how much better the background removal works. Definitely worth trying again if you haven’t recently.

In terms of filters, what would you be interested in? We have an automatic image improvement model that runs on every image but I’m curious if there’s more you’re looking for.

On the Android app front - we hear you!

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

johnobc — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 20:05:20 GMT

That's a great idea! We’ve always viewed body care products as so reliant on a seller’s packaging that we weren’t sure it made sense to offer photos of those since they wouldn't include branding. As an example, a cup of coffee generally just looks like a cup of coffee but a bottle of lotion is really differentiated by the branding on the bottle. We’ve also found the app is great at taking photos of these where sometimes food can be a bit more challenging with all the food styling that goes on. Definitely something we can consider though and please let me know if I’m misunderstanding.

Re: Photo Studio Q&A: Food & Beverage — Create high-quality menu images!

johnobc — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 20:06:13 GMT

We’ve been getting this feedback a lot (behind an Android version…) and it is on our list. Candidly, this will be faster and easier for us to accomplish than Android since it’s in the wheelhouse of our existing engineering team. I can't make any promises on timeline but I'm hoping we get to it soon!