Last year, we sat on the outside deck at Apricots, a restaurant in Farmington, Conn., enjoying the last of our dinner. It was a gorgeous summer evening with a river flowing below us, the sun just setting and our wine glasses shimmering in the candlelight. What made it even more special was the attention we’d received from the sommelier, who recommended a wine that perfectly balanced our meals. I will remember that night forever – but, unfortunately, not the wine.
We took the empty bottle home with us, but even after we soaked the bottle overnight, the label was still firmly attached. Even though I still have labels from my first trip to Europe at age 19, I had to put this label – with bottle – into the recycling bin.
So I decided to come up with a better way to keep track of wine labels – at the same time that I was developing Lot18’s new iPhone app. The plan was to have the app feature close-ups of labels rather than photographs of bottles but, believe it or not, label images can be very difficult to get (wineries don’t always have them handy, or in a consistent format).
I went home after work one night, bound and determined to find a way to get good clean photos or scans of wine labels – and a quick Google search revealed that many before me struggled with the same issue. A regular snapshot won’t always suffice, and the images just don’t come off the bottles all that easily – if at all.
Sure, you can fill empty bottles with boiling water, wait several minutes for the adhesive to soften, then work the label off with a razor. Or you use an aggressive adhesive on a clear plastic sheet to bond the label surface to the sheet, and when as the sheet is pulled the label shears such that most of the label adheres to the sheet. But really, no method is perfect.
Then the proverbial light bulb switched on over my head: What if I could scan a thin, vertical slice of the label in the center of the bottle, then slightly rotate the bottle and take another scan? And another? And another? Those slices could be stitched together to produce an image that would appear the same as if the label was removed from the bottle and scanned.
Turns out, it’s pretty easy. All you need is your Mac, a high-quality camera (such as the one on the iPhone4, with a tripod such as the Glif), a light source, a cardboard box and a turntable.
Online, I found a turntable from Mitre that is mostly used for jewelry displays. It makes a full revolution every 30 seconds, for an angular rate of 10 degrees per second. Another search turned up 15-inch fluorescent fixtures with bulbs that allow for good color balance. I mounted the lights inside a Staples printer paper box, lining the inside of the box with white paper, and set the turntable in the middle. I spent less than $100 on all the equipment.
Smile for the camera
I turned on the lights, placed a bottle in the center of the turntable, placed the iPhone in its holder, and started scanning using an app I created called WineLabler. Fire it up and tap “Calibrate” on your iPhone, and the app does a white balance, focuses the camera, detects the sides, bottom, and neck of the bottle – then tells you when to start the turntable. The app records a series of 500 or so snapshots.
After the bottle spins for one revolution, the app stops grabbing images – and you can then stop the turntable. When the app finishes stitching the images together, it produces a full image of from the 500 slices. The app then gives you a way to view the final label image and zoom in on detail, so you can determine if this is a scan you want to save or discard.
You can then upload these images to a computer by emailing the image to yourself, using iTunes to pull the image out of WineLabler’s Document folder, or through your iCloud account. With the image on a Mac, you can use Preview to extract one or more sections of the scan and save them as image files in any format Preview supports.
WineLabler is not a finished app – it can only handle red wine now, and the image stitching algorithms need tuning. But, I’d be eager to hear your thoughts. Would you be willing to spend ~$100 on the equipment (and $0 for the app) to scan your bottles? Would you like to download the labels of wines you purchase on the Lot18 site?
Just leave a comment below.
Dave,
Is there a public wine database that is searchable using the Univeral Product Code (UPC) on a wine bottle? If so, you might be able to add a feature that could download information (producer, year, type, etc) by scanning the label. This would be useable in stores, restaurants, home, etc. Just a thought.
Warmest regards,
Bob
Nice, but overly complicated. You can do the same with some simple computer vision algorithms and it would require only 2-3 photos. I’m a computer vision researcher. Contact me at the provided email if you want to discuss it further.
David,
That app has great potential beyond wine bottles! I’m a Maya archaeologist (in addition to a Lot 18 member and wine fan), and there is a well-known photographer in our ranks who takes rollout photos of ceramic vases. What you are developing is the same technique for a lot less money and an iPhone. I’m all in favor of it! You can see some examples of his photos here: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/maya-rollout-vessels.htm or just do an image search for “Kerr rollout vessels.”
Cheers,
Brett
100 bucks is too much to spend and also currently it is not be portable for international travel. The thing that kills the price is the cost turntable. Timing is not a problem and the lighting could be had for less. If I can find it, I once saw a small turntable. And there a a few other variables that come into play.
A cool feature would be to have the program do a recognition of the label like Snooth is trying to do but in you case add it to your cellar or notes even if it did not find it in It library. The Snooth app bats about 3% for the ones it has in it DB and then it will not let you add your own.
The app and technical solution sound awesome; however, there is a surefire method for removing labels you didn’t mention: a hairdryer. It only takes about 30 seconds to melt the adhesive and lift a label off the bottle, and if you like to keep your labels glued in a scrapbook, you can usually just press the freshly peeled label down and it will stick.
Overall, I think it sounds pretty cool-though still a bit more work than I would like. But I would absolutely love to be able to download labels from my purchases on Lot18!
I have to tell you that I frequently take pix of bottles of wine when I am out and have found one I am particularly fond of. The camera on my very old iPhone works just fine to do this for me. Other times I just jot down the name in the notes app on that same old phone so, no, I would not spend $100 to buy other equipment.
Thanks
Dear David, It all looks good, and I have been struggling with the same problem for some 40+ years. My unwieldy practice is to bloody well keep the bottles subtly displayed on shelves around the house, or in boxes, where the wine has been something very special, or the occasion very precious. Good luck with further development! Kind regards and thanks, Paul Heisler. (small p.s. Sheer should be shear)
I would love to download labels from Lot18! Your system sounds promising, David. I’m not certain I’d pay $100 to do this myself at home, but I’d like to follow your progress. Keeping digital files of my labels would definitely help me declutter my wine cellar!
Well, all that looks great, but usually what I do is just write the name of the wine down if I really like a wine I find…I mean it’s fewer words even than just the first line of this comment.
If I like a particular label then I’ll take a picture with whatever camera I have on hand (cell phone, point and shoot, dslr, etc). One picture is fine, just put the camera down on a flat surface, use flash, and use the timer on the shutter so the camera is still when shooting. The pic will come out great every time.
I like what you’ve done – and in fact this ap probably could be tweaked to work without the special equipment, just maybe taking a video scan off a smart phone that has a built in flash – but at present it’s to complex/expensive to be feasible unless you’re looking to make production-quality captures of a label. For most people that is way more than they need.
Cool idea, just not sure how practical it is for on-the-go wine drinking.
On a side note, it would be fantastic to be able to download the labels off lot18 wines
Best of luck,
Nick
Here is a follow up. Check this machine out..
http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/camalapse/
Hi David
I’d love to chat with you more about it. I’ve been looking for a similar solution and I reckon a simple stand that you would place the bottle in and hold the iPhone would work. The app would be like a pano app and you rotate the bottle to take say 4 photos as you rotate the bottle. The app visually guides you on the screen as to the overlap needed to make a straight label. After all the photos are done the app stitches the slices of the four photos together to make the flat label.
Syd