Creating pack shots with 1 press of a button

Manual work with paint pots

For their annual product catalog, website and numerous other communications, Boss Paints creates more than 1000 packshots. Each packshot was created manually by Boss Paints.

How did they go about it?

A label was created in Photoshop (with different specifications, icons, designs, languages …), and this was printed. Then the label was placed on the correct paint pot and a packshot was made with a camera. Of course, this packshot always had to be photographed in the same way. It is not always easy to take these pictures with the same quality (in the correct position, with the same lighting and so on).

You guessed it, a very time-consuming activity, especially since updates or corrections require going through the whole process again.

What could be improved?

Catena Company has already automated marketing processes for Boss Paints in the past. We were asked to investigate whether the process of creating pack-shots could not be more efficient.

Time and efficiency gains could be realized by:

• Being able to respond in real time to changes (as soon as there is a new label or tag, the pack is ready)
• Ensuring consistent quality which then provides a unified product experience, at any time and through any medium.
• Make the process less dependent on graphic specialists
• Enable new and modern output formats such as rendering a pdf on a 3D image, for example.

Thus, our workflow specialists not only looked for a solution to simplify this process, but also how the content of the labels could be automatically formatted by providing links to Boss Paints’ PIM and ERP systems.

Developing labels at the touch of a button

The time-consuming work of creating labels in Adobe Photoshop was automated.

By linking Adobe InDesign templates to the PIM database, they are formatted automatically. The different layout requirements were taken into account. Different icons are displayed with a different color and adapted text each time. The requirements were checked against the legal requirements and regulations that apply to these specific applications.

As a result, a print-ready PDF of a label is now automatically generated from an online tool using Adobe InDesign templates.

Furthermore, automation also eliminated the need for manual packshots.

There are templates per pack in Adobe Photoshop (one template or template per paint pot). Each template is unique (dimensions, diameter, height, etc.). However, variants of a template may exist. A variant is a modification that has no impact on the dimensions such as another color of lid, another color of jar, etc.

To these templates the labels of the product are added afterwards (the packshots), which are delivered in pdf. The output of the result can be chosen: psd, tiff, jpeg. This way they are immediately available for the webshop, publicity, catalog & photo archive, inventory, publications, …

How did Boss Paints experience the collaboration?

Stefaan Geeraert: “To do such projects, you don’t need a supplier, but a partner. This role was certainly taken up. Catena thought along, implemented the solution and provided excellent support.“