Today we're announcing a long awaited release of our updated Magento Integration v3.5 on Magento Connect. There are several major enhancements in this release:

• Integration has been updated to the latest stable 360 viewer script that packs a slew of improvements and latest fixes (more is coming in the next script update shortly).
• prettyPhoto lightbox support has also been updated to one of the latest releases (you can now also choose one of several nice skins that it comes with).
• We introduced a new Ad-hoc integration mode (in addition to the standard one). It allows you to keep any other customizations or third-party modules that you might previously had installed on your product pages in the same location where we activate our standard integration. Previously this was a major concern as there have been many conflicts with the existing 3d party modules that could be only resolved by uninstalling one of the components. Now with the addition of the new Ad-hoc integration you can hook the 360 degree photos pretty much anywhere on your product pages. It can be used as an embedded 360 view or as a small image thumbnail (or a text link) that will activate the viewer inside the same prettyPhoto lightbox popup.
• We also added our Root Path / Master config support that allows you to have a single 360 viewer configuration file for all of your products in Magento (assuming they have the same number of 360 images, etc) and also support for loading your 360 degree product photos from an external server or CDN.
• Other minor extras and fixes.

Here's some of the screenshots from this release:

PS: this new module has already been successfully installed by a few folks and they reported that everything went smoothly via Magento CE 1.6 and 1.7.

Check out our latest blog post on PhotoGear 360 where we talk about 360 spin photography of flashlights using the Ortery equipment combo, consisting of the PhotoCapture 360 photography turntable and PhotoSimile 50 Lighbox.

We shared a pretty interesting write up there that you can find helpful when photographing small uniform products similar to flashlights using the Ortery hardware. Here's a short extract from this post:

"What we also had to figure out was how to best present the flashlights as just dropping them on the 360 turntable was not expected to produce good results – we wanted to achieve a straight horizontal orientation of each object as if it was floating in the air while rotating in 360 degrees. Our solution was this small DIY mini platform with two tiny stands made out of metallic paperclips that we then plugged into the piece of cardboard foam...".

Click on this image to read the full post that also shows a completed 360 video of one of the finalized flashlights (there was about a hundred of those!).

Here is another recent example of an excellent implementation of a 360 product view that we think truly stands out.

Produced by Lowe Alpine to showcase their high-tech backpacks, these 360 degree photos deliver one of the best online product presentations we've seen so far. See one of the sample 360 views here or just click on the image:

The backpack pages feature nicely blended high-quality 360 product photography with neatly organized hot-spots, all tastefully crafted into website's look and feel (notice how all of our standard toolbar graphics have been overriden with custom imagery).

We are glad that the guys at Lowe Alpine picked our WebRotate 360 Product Viewer and put it into a good use!

In this quick tutorial we would like to share with you how our WebRotate 360 photo studio shot about a hundred flashlights for one of our 360 photography clients. This is a great example of how this technology can be applied to achieve great results quickly and within budget when working on 360 photography projects consisting mostly of small uniform products like the flashlights.

The equipment we decided to use for this project was our Ortery Photosimile 50 and the smallest Ortery turntable, PhotoCapture 360 that would give us consistent lighting and with sufficient automation to get the large number of items photographed in 360 degrees quickly and efficiently.

What we also had to figure out was how to best present the flashlights as just dropping them on the 360 turntable was not expected to produce good results – we wanted to achieve a straight horizontal orientation of each object as if it was floating in the air while rotating in 360 degrees. Our solution was this small DIY mini platform with two tiny stands made out of metallic paperclips that we then plugged into the piece of cardboard foam which was also wrapped into the sheet of white paper. The platform was measured and marked to identify its lines of symmetry such that we could always quickly align it with the center of the PhotoCapture 360 turntable.

The cardboard stand was made just once and was reused for all items by moving the paperclip stands along the center line on the wrapped paper to support each product firmly. Some of the larger products would instead require a piece of white rubber in the front to hold the light in the desired horizontal position.

We then also added two dark grey cards in the left and right corners on the back of the Photosimile 50 to avoid too much glare on the flashlights when they were turning at about 45 degrees.

To give the products more spark on the front views, two low power daylight lights (single bulb) were added on top of the lightbox as you can see below.

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 1)
• 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