We didn't plan to write a new post until we could offer you to download our new SpotEditor 3.5 but things have changed yesterday when we found out that the latest Firefox release (version 27) that came out yesterday, Feb 4th, 2014 broke 360 image rotation in all of our products that run the 3.5 beta script. With this Firefox update, the image rotation would lock up after you drag 360 images just for a few moments.

The 3.5 beta script is packaged with all our recent plugins including Magento, OpenCart, BigCommerce, WordPress as well as our Sharing script. If you are using our Prestashop add-in it's unlikely that you have 3.5 beta as we didn't have a chance to update it to 3.5 beta (though we did help some of you to install 3.5 beta script in Prestashop).

The place where Firefox 27 broke 360 image rotation was identified and it had to do with our special Firefox targeted functionality that eliminates image flicker during rotation when using larger images. It's a tricky piece of code that relies heavily on image events and it seems that Firefox 27 introduced a regression in that department.

We spent some time yesterday and cooked up a good solution that still keeps our flicker prevention module working as designed while addressing the issue with Firefox 27. All our downloads, plugins, etc that utilize 3.5 beta have been successfully updated yesterday and today and were re-tested everywhere.

If you have previously installed either of these, please download our 3.5 patch below and replace imagerotator.js included in the zip in your webserver installation under the imagerotator folder wherever it happens to be on your server (if you're not sure where it is, please let us know):

• 3.5 beta limited update
• Magento integration 3.5.x
• WordPress integration 2.0
• Any WebRotate 360 OpenCart integration
• Any WebRotate 360 BigCommerce integration

Or to make it simple, if you see inertia effect when dragging / releasing 360 images where rotation gradually slows down on release, or if you have a working full-screen feature, it's 3.5 beta. For the techy types, you can fire up your browser console (e.g firebug, etc) and see the 360 viewer version on page re-load inside the console.

Download patch »

If you are using our PRO script with Full-screen support, please contact us directly to get updated PRO-enabled 3.5 script.

Check out this new preview video of our latest version of WebRotate 360 SpotEditor v3.5. In this video we show just part of the new functionality related to our unique 360-degree image editing workflow designed specifically with the 360 product photography in mind. It includes our exclusive smart crop and resize tools, one of a kind background helper removal tool, immediate batch image preview and editing, quick path tools and more.

Using these fine-tuned tools, neatly assembled in one lightweight package will allow you processing your raw JPG images to create finalized 360 product views with a pure white background, including watermarks, interactive hot-spots published straight to your FTP in just a few mouse clicks:

It's not yet released, but please don't hesitate to request a beta (some of the features shown in the video are only available with our PRO license so please send us a confirmation of your PRO license purchase so that we could send you a full beta as shown in the video) or just subscribe to our newsletter that you can find in the right column of this blog to be first to know when this release is finally out!

March 07, 2014 - You can now download this Beta release for Windows and Mac OS X on our main download page under DOWNLOAD LATEST BETA 3.5

Other features being finalized for this release:

• New hot-spot indicator library tool to allow adding your custom hot-spot image indicators with ease.
• Hot-spots that activate on click vs hover.
• 360 degree spin and pan with mouse hover.
• Image labels to allow jumping / playing to referenced labels.
• New hot-spot actions with the ability to control 360 viewer functions such as zoom or playback as well as navigating to linked 360 views.
• Extensive API
• A set of pre-made publishing templates such as responsive design template, mobile template, API template, popup / lightbox template, gallery template.
• And a lot more.

There's a new blog post on our Photogear 360 blog with some interesting bits on how we accomplished a 360 product photography project for SCUBAPRO a couple of years ago which involved a few diving fins in a suspended 360 degree motion. Check it out by following this link or just click on the image below.

We will keep sharing more details on how we approach 360 product photography in own commercial photography projects on the Photogear 360 blog while this blog will be used mostly for more technical details pertaining to our WebRotate 360 Product Viewer software and related topics.

Let us know if you would be interested in making a guest blog post here or Photogear360.com/blog about your experience with 360 degree product photography. Just use one of the emails on this page to get in touch.

Here’s one of our more interesting 360 product photography setups that we have long wanted to share with our friends. The task here was to photograph a set of cool Scubapro diving fins (among many other scuba items!) that presented a certain challenge due to their peculiar shape. Obviously just throwing a fin onto the turntable wouldn’t be such a good idea..

So we brainstormed this a bit and came up with this simple setup:

As you can see in the images, the main twist here is suspending the product from the top with a fishing line and having it touch the surface of the 360 turntable such that there’s just enough friction to control the product rotation.

We also had to ruin all of the fins we photographed as the only reliable / sturdy way to suspend a fin was to drill two tiny holes in the back of the fin to fix our fishing line which was then attached at the top to a metal pole that sits between the two shiny C-stands that you can see in the pictures.

The final stretch of the fishing line was also painted with a black marker so that it’s not very visible on the product images.

The rest of the lighting setup is pretty straightforward – there’re two lights just behind the product to overexpose the background and there’re two more powerful light-boxes at the front and the third one above the fin to bring the main light onto the product.

This is one of the situations where having a robotic 360 photography turntable or an Ortery Photobench studio would usually not work due to the subtle nature of the suspension that is safer and more flexible to control manually.

Here’s our newer post about another interesting suspension photography sample which actually uses a robotic turntable – click here.

You can see how we built this manual platform on our page dedicated solely to our famous DIY 360 Product Photography Turntable.

We have recently moved all posts from our old photogear360 blog here, so here's some related material you may find useful:

• 360 Product Photography of Long Narrow Objects
• 360 product photography upside down
• 360 product photography of Glock pistols
• Using suspension in 360 product photography (example 2)
• White background in your 360 product photography projects
• DIY guide to building a manual 360 product photography turntable
• 360 product photography of large objects
• Mastering 360 product photography
• 360 product photography of flashlights