Vehicles need to stand out in the bustling arena of online car sales. Websites such as AutoTrader and cars.com list thousands of dealers who each are marketing hundreds of cars and trucks. One pivotal factor sets apart successful dealers, enabling them to sell their inventory quicker without having vehicles languish in inventory and be subject to price – and revenue – drops. It’s the quality of their images. Superior pictures generate superior sales and profit. Generating better pictures is a difficult challenge if you don’t have a photo studio.
Taking pictures of cars isn’t as simple as it may seem. The background needs to be clean. The focus should be on the vehicle, not your parking lot or service center. Other vehicles, utility poles, trees, shrubs, grass, pavement, buildings, dark or dirty walls, and auto lifts detract from the picture.
Good light is critical to minimize glare, hotspots, and shadows. It prevents car buyers from seeing the actual color and features of the car. Shooting against a wall or in a service center is unattractive. Indoor pictures typically are dark.
Outdoor pictures can be hugely uneven, depending on sunlight, clouds, the angle of the shot, and obstructions. Photos can be washed out with bright sunlight or dim.
These conditions fail to showcase your vehicles compared to other auto dealers.
Use BGR to improve photos
One solution to better pictures is Background Replacement or BGR. BGR eliminates many environmental factors and distractions and places your car center stage.
How does BGR work?
BGR traces the outline of a vehicle and removes the part of the image outside the outline. Often the vehicle shadow is included to make the photo more realistic. An image is then pasted under the vehicle to present a cleaner or branded vehicle image. The background image can be blank, your showroom, or even a photo studio, and include your dealer name or web site.
BGR can be performed through programs like Photoshop or a service provider.
What is AI BGR?
BGR pictures can also be created automatically through AI by EZ360’s EZSmart service. A dealer can shoot 100 cars per month with 50 photos per car, or 5,000 per month. That’s a lot of photos to correct. AI, or artificial intelligence, avoids the delay and cost of having all these photos manually edited. EZSmart enables BGR pictures to posted instantly to car dealer websites.
