Get accurate estimates from a photo

A two-minute guide to photo logging in Pensum

Photo logging is for meals you can't easily weigh: a restaurant plate, a shared dish, a lunch you didn't cook. You lead with what you know, the app estimates, and you fix what is off. The more you tell it, the closer the estimate gets.

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

The app takes any weight you type as a fixed value. If the chicken was 180 g on the pack, enter that. It estimates everything else around the numbers you give, so one known weight improves everything else on the plate.

Name the cooking method

Fried, grilled, roasted, boiled. Oil and butter barely show up in a photo, yet they add a lot of calories. After weights, that's the single most useful thing to tell it.

Give it a sense of scale

Mention the plate or bowl size, or that a portion is about one cup or two tablespoons. Give the app a size reference and it can gauge the portion.

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. Use the photo tool for the times you can't weigh, like eating out or a dish someone else served.

How accurate a photo estimate is

Photo entries are approximations. Pensum flags them as estimated and treats the micronutrient figures as rough. Use them to fill in a day you can't measure; switch to weighed entries when precision matters. These numbers are for your own tracking. They are not medical or dietary advice.

Get Pensum on Google Play and open the camera tab to try it.