I’d get someone to profile the camera.
It can be done remotely by someone like Ian Lyons or Andrew Rodney.
Jody,
Profiling the camera is a nice thing. This shouldn’t be necessary, however, if you set your white balance more accurately when shooting. Color casts can be adjusted in post using Photoshop, but getting it right (or much closer) at the time of capture will help alot. Are you using a digital camera with manual white balance controls? If so, shoot a white card under your lights and use that as a custom white balance slide for the camera to calculate. You can also shoot a frame in camera RAW and then open it in Photoshop’s raw converter (available seperately with v7 and included with CS). The Adobe raw converter has a nice color temp slider that will help you determine what your lights are doing. Then dial this number into your camera’s manual white balance setting (if it has one).
Also, when making adjustments by eye, then you need to start this whole process by calibrating your monitor if you haven’t already done so.
Also, the color temp of floods will change over time, so the white balance formula used today will most likely drift a bit over the life of the lamps.
Getting the balance close at the time of capture will make little tweaks in Photoshop very simple and should streamline your workflow and improve consistency from one shoot to the next (avoiding yellow highlights on black boots, for example).
Good luck in your work and with your site!
What camera are you using?
What lighting fixtures and lights?
settings?
backdrops or not?
Nice site.
I see the yellowish highlites on reflections and white shoes. Why do you use tungsten floodlamps? Is it a personal choice? It must get hot in your studio.
It does add a nice touch to what would otherwise be monochrome looking whites and neutrals. Just curious.
Hi and big thanks for reading and answering!!
First i use a fuji S5000 camera, the lights in the studio are interfit 3200, i have one either side of the scoop. The scoop is white perspex with 4 strip lights placed behind. The white balance on the camera only has 4 settings? I don’t think i can adjust this manually. Everyone please keep in mind i am very new to all this!! as you may have all guessed. With the fact that we are adding up to 5 new styles per week i would not be able to contract the work out to a photographer( allthough some days i would love to!).
I tend to run out of time and switch the camera to Auto, i really would love to be able to have more control, i really stuggle with pink shoes for some reason. The tend to go really red and the background goes really dark, i do adjust the colour in PS7 but it’s very difficult to get it close to the actual shoe. I sometimes struggle with black also!!!
Am i best to have some natural light when taking the photo or just the studio lighting? I enjoy preparing the images in photoshop and really dont mind taking the background out using the polygonal lasso, i just dont like sending shoes out and the customer gets them and there a different colour!!
Many thanks again guys!
Jody
Hi and big thanks for reading and answering!!
First i use a fuji S5000 camera, the lights in the studio are interfit 3200, i have one either side of the scoop. The scoop is white perspex with 4 strip lights placed behind. The white balance on the camera only has 4 settings? I don’t think i can adjust this manually. Everyone please keep in mind i am very new to all this!! as you may have all guessed. With the fact that we are adding up to 5 new styles per week i would not be able to contract the work out to a photographer( allthough some days i would love to!).
I tend to run out of time and switch the camera to Auto, i really would love to be able to have more control, i really stuggle with pink shoes for some reason. The tend to go really red and the background goes really dark, i do adjust the colour in PS7 but it’s very difficult to get it close to the actual shoe. I sometimes struggle with black also!!!
Am i best to have some natural light when taking the photo or just the studio lighting? I enjoy preparing the images in photoshop and really dont mind taking the background out using the polygonal lasso, i just dont like sending shoes out and the customer gets them and there a different colour!!
Many thanks again guys!
Jody
Post Reply | Bookmark | Edit
Choose one type of lighting: 3200°K, strobe, daylight, etc., rather than mix light sources. You’ll just make your job more complicated. Calibrate black, white, neutral grey balance for the camera, as well as its tonal scale using the preferred light source; do a careful monitor calibration…
Are you assigning a color profile to your images in Photoshop? How are your customers viewing your work? If on a computer monitor, I’d bet that their monitors are NOT calibrated. Or do you supply prints?
Neil
Hi, all our orders are taken on-line, we do not produce any hard copy. I will look at colour profile in Photoshop, i usally just click ok when the promt arrives on screen, what am i best to chose?
Many thanks again
Jody
Jody,
If you are shooting just for the Web, you may have to have a monitor setup with no profile or color adjustment for checking your photos — most consumers don’t know anything about color balance or profiling their monitors, and just use them right out of the box.
This of course means that different brands and models and monitor technologies will show the images differently. And Macs use a different default gamma than Windows machines, so that images on a Mac tend to look lighter. So everything you do for the Web is going to be a compromise to some degree. Lots of luck!! <vbg>
If you are also producing images for print (I don’t think I noticed this in your posts), you may have to produce to sets of images — high-res images balanced for offset printing; and low-res images that look best on an uncalibrated blue-white monitor screen.
Neil
Hi Neal and many thanks,
Am i correct in thinking it best to set-up a windows machine in the corner and just test what the photo’s look like on there aswell? To try and get the results that look best for all platforms.
I do all the artwork for our magazine adverts in 300dpi, the first large advert comes out next week in Elle magazine, I will post a report to you on how it looks! The smaller print we have done has been great.
thanks
Jody
Jody,
Just to be clear — for print, you need proper calibration/profiles for each component: camera; monitor; local color printer; and digital images.
For Web testing, an uncalibrated Windows computer/monitor combination sounds like a fair bet to get you in the ball park — 95% of the PCs are Windows-based. At least you can quickly see the results of your work. We check Web stuff on both Windows and Macintosh machines.
Neil
Jody-
What Neil said in post #6. Also, are you shooting with manual White Balance? If not, you should experiment with it.
Does your studio have multiple different color temperature light sources, e.g. windows? I had a huge problem with that until I switched to all daylight-temperature lighting.
I have difficulty seeing what you describe on the website. I do feel, however, that the shoes might generally expose better shot and presented against a gray background. IMO the shoes look too stark, and enlargement windows should enlarge a lot more. That may just be my personal bias, however.
Many many thanks,
Neil would you be able to give me some feed back on the images via a un calibrated windows P/C machine? I will get looking for somthing on e-bay!!
Many thanks Allen, I have beeen trying expeiments with white balance, i do have windows and a glass area in the roof in the studio, Could you tell me more about daylight temperatue lighting?
Do you mean shoot the image on a grey background and then take it out in photoshop back to white??? If so could you recomemd a grey background to use. I part agree with the size of the pop up’s now more people are on faster internet connections, this is something i can change quickly in Go-Live.
Many thanks
Jody
Jody,
The machines I generally access are Macs. You can get some decent new cheap and reliable hardware from Dell. I saw some basic Dell desktop machines in their catalog for under $400 (sans monitor).
But there is a workaround that’s cheaper, if you have a second Mac or monitor. Uncalibrate the monitor and set the color temperature to cool white and the gamma to 2.2.
BTW, don’t just scale up the larger popup images. If you don’t already have good larger images, do a new scan at the proper resolution.
Neil
Or go to a library and access your web page off their internet connect or any public access PC. I’m pretty sure most use default system/monitor settings on their networked PC’s at least my small town library does.
Uncalibrate the monitor and…
Hmm…for color checking:
Why not just profile a good 2.2 gamma monitor profile — get Photoshop not broke — and PS> View> Proof SetUp> Windows RGB [?]
Should be noted to PS> Image> Mode> Convert to Profile: sRGB (the target www colorspace) BEFORE SoftProofing Windows RGB, and/or going to ImageReady or Save for Web.
Now, looking a Widows box for checking how our web site fonts/layouts appear on a PC…
