Get accurate estimates from a photo

A two-minute guide to photo logging in Pensum

Photo logging is for meals you cannot easily weigh: a restaurant plate, a shared dish, a lunch you did not cook. It is not a magic button. You lead, the app estimates, and you correct. The more you tell it, the closer it lands.

How it works

1. Take a photo of the plate, or pick one from your gallery.
2. Tell the app what you already know: the ingredients, any weights you have, how it was cooked, and roughly how big the plate or bowl is.
3. Pensum reads the photo and returns an editable list of ingredients with grams, including the easy-to-miss extras like cooking oil and added sugar.
4. Correct anything that looks off. Adjust a weight, assign the right food where it asks, add or remove an ingredient.
5. Pick the meal and log it. Photo entries are saved as estimated, so you always know which numbers were measured and which were read from a picture.

Tips for a closer estimate

Lead with the facts you have

Any weight you type is treated as fixed, not guessed. If the chicken was 180 g on the pack, say so. Everything else is estimated around the numbers you give, so a single known weight pulls the whole plate into line.

Name the cooking method

Fried, grilled, roasted, boiled. Oil and butter are nearly invisible in a photo but heavy in calories. After weights, telling the app how the food was cooked is the single biggest accuracy win.

Give it a sense of scale

A photo has no ruler. Mention the plate or bowl size, or that a portion is about one cup or two tablespoons. A scale reference is what turns a guess at the portion into a good estimate.

Shoot the whole plate in good light

One clear, well-lit shot from a slight angle beats a dark close-up. Keep every component in frame so nothing gets left out of the count.

One meal per photo

Photograph a single plate at a time. A clean plate is easier to read than a crowded table, and you can log each dish to the right meal.

When to weigh instead

If the food is in front of you and a scale is within reach, weighing and searching is faster and more accurate than any photo. The photo tool earns its place when weighing is not an option, not as a shortcut around the scale.

What an estimate is, and is not

Photo entries are approximations. Pensum flags them as estimated and treats the micronutrients as indicative rather than exact. Use them to keep your day complete when measuring is impossible, and lean on weighed entries when precision matters. The estimates are for your own tracking, not medical or dietary advice.

Ready to try it? Download Pensum for Android and open the camera tab.