There is no single standard name for rotating product imagery. Customers, retailers and platforms use photography, spin, view, rotation, animation, video, GIF and 3D—sometimes for the same asset and sometimes for very different deliverables. This glossary explains what those terms usually mean at PhotoSpherix and directs you to the right service.
There is no single standard name for rotating product imagery. Customers, retailers and platforms use photography, spin, view, rotation, animation, video, GIF and 3D—sometimes for the same asset and sometimes for very different deliverables. This glossary explains what those terms usually mean at PhotoSpherix and directs you to the right service.
The core PhotoSpherix service: we photograph a real product through a controlled sequence of angles. A single row records one complete horizontal rotation. Additional rows add views from above and below. Those source photographs can become an interactive spin, individual product stills, video and retailer-ready deliverables.
These terms usually describe the interactive experience created from the photographs. A shopper drags or swipes to rotate the product and stop at any available angle. “Spin,” “view” and “rotation” often refer to the same single-row asset, while “photography” describes how PhotoSpherix creates it.
These are broad, nontechnical phrases. They may mean a draggable interactive spin or an automatically playing animation. The correct deliverable depends on where it will appear and whether the viewer needs to control the product. Tell us the destination and desired behavior; we will translate that into the right files.
In photographic product-imaging workflows, “3D” often means a multi-row spin made from real photographs. The shopper can rotate left and right and also move above or below the product. It provides more dimensional understanding than a single row, but it is not a computer-generated 3D model.
Full 360×360 photography extends multi-row capture to complete spherical coverage, from the North Pole directly above the product to the South Pole directly beneath it. It is used when every surface, including the top and underside, must be available for inspection.
A 360 product video is a linear, automatically playing motion deliverable—usually MP4 or WebM—created from the same photographed rotation. It works well in marketplaces, social channels, presentations and placements that do not support an interactive viewer. Unlike a product spin, the viewer does not drag it to choose an angle.
These phrases usually describe guided motion through multi-row or spherical product imagery. The video can move around the product and change elevation, but it remains a linear video rather than an interactive experience or a CGI model.
People often use “GIF” as shorthand for any automatically rotating product animation. A literal GIF may be appropriate, but MP4, WebM or animated WebP can provide better quality and smaller files. We choose the format around the platform specification while preserving the intended rotating-product experience.
A viewer is the player that displays and controls the image sequence; it is not the photography itself. Different ecommerce platforms, retailers and software providers use different viewers. PhotoSpherix can prepare the sequential images, naming, order, dimensions and package for a compatible third-party viewer, retailer viewer or customer platform. The useful master photographs remain portable instead of being valuable only inside one player.
These are digitally constructed or reconstructed assets, not interchangeable names for photographed spins. PhotoSpherix photographs real products and produces image-based spins, stills and motion deliverables. If a destination requires an actual manipulable 3D model, that is a different production workflow.
You do not need to know the industry label. Tell us whether the customer should drag the product, whether it should play automatically, whether they need to look above and below, and where the asset will be delivered. We will identify the correct capture plan, frame count, rows, format and export package.
