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How can I add a product?

Open Food Facts is a collaborative project where each citizen can contribute by adding or completing product information.

We try to offer the most user-friendly interface to make it easy and fast to add products. Here are some images with each stage involve in adding a product (with a few tricks to go faster.)

First of all, register on Open Food Facts and login.

If it's not done yet, you can <a href="http://world.openfoodfacts.org/cgi/user.pl">register in 30 seconds</a>.

Take pictures of the product

The photos are better taken in the following order:

The barcode
The product main visual: It's best to place it on a white surface (a sheet of paper) and take the picture vertically
The ingredients list
The nutritional composition

Few tips on taking pictures:

Take pictures in portrait or landscape mode, you can crop them later on the website.
Respect the aspect ratio of the product.
The more the image is focused, the less there is of shadows and reflections, the better.
Don't "rework" photos in software before sending them on the site (resizing, cropping, white balance, etc.). All this will be done directly on the site.

Add the product

You will find an "Add a product" link on the right hand column.

Send the photo that contains the bar code by clicking on the button "Upload Image".

Note for Chrome and Firefox users: the photo is automatically resized to a reasonable size, hence upload is fast even with 20 million pixels camera.

The bar code will be recognized automatically if the picture is not too blurry. When the product is already in the database, you will be redirected to the product page. Then you can check the accuracy of the information. Provided your pictures are better, do not hesitate to edit the product and upload yours. If the product does not exist, you will be provided with a form to enter the information

Send the product main visual photo

Click "Add a photo" to add it, unless you already uploaded a photo that contains both the bar code and the main visual in the previous step.

If required, you can correct the image with the rotate left/right buttons.

Crop the product within the image by "click and drag" with the mouse, then hit "Validate and/or resize image".

If done on white background, try "Photo on white background: try to remove the background" which slightly grays out edges of the photo and enhance colors.

Photo with the box unticked:

Photo with the box ticked:

The result depends on the amount of shadows, keep the original photo if the colors are too saturated.

Add product information

The product name is the one that appears on the packaging.

The generic name is the "legal" product name, without indication of brand.Usually found on the packaging too

The fields "Packaging", "Brands", "Categories", "Origin", "Labels" are keywords lists (tags) under which the product will be referenced. You can type these keywords separated by a comma or by hitting enter.

You can fill in all the keywords that you think are relevant (check products already listed). When the number of products in the base will be more significant, we can sort through all the keywords and create a category tree and correspondences between multiple spellings ("doughnut" and "donut"), etc. We can also offer suggestions on the fly (by typing a few letters) for brands etc.

Send ingredients photo

As for the other photo, upload the ingredient list one.

Crop the area containing the list and hit "Validate and/or resize image".

You can avoid typing the list of ingredients with the "Extract the ingredients from the picture". Recognition works better when the picture is sharp and the text straight. On the other hand if the text is curved (photo of a can for example) or if the background is not uniform, the ingredients are not generally recognised.

With this product, recognition is almost perfect (an 'a' as been recognized as a '1'). The text automatically extracted often needs correction.

This automatic recognition should improve with time: the more product we have, the better the dictionary of ingredients we can generate to help the text recognition algorithm.

Next fill in the potentially allergens "Traces" in the products. This information is crucial and sometimes vital for allergy sufferers.

Send nutritional information photo

We see more and more products that indicate the nutritional composition on the packaging. As for the ingredients, upload and optimise the corresponding picture.

Nutritional tables are more difficult to recognize than the ingredients list, therefore it is not automated yet.

Currently we provide a list of the most frequently listed nutrients with their common quantity unit.

The European legislation allows manufacturers to list other nutrients (vitamins and minerals in particular). If they are listed on the packaging, you can add them in the last line of the table. By typing the first few letters you will get a drop down list with the corresponding nutrients and the most common corresponding units (mg for vitamin C for example). If you can not find the nutrient, you can type it in full

Save the product

Now you only need to hit the "Save" button.

Thanks in advance for all the products you will contribute to the database!

Ready for your first product? See you at the top right of this page.