Are you using a professional lighting setup? The White backgrounds on professional sites come from a photographer who has specialized in product photography and arranges a myriad of lights in a manner to prevent shadows (and give the proper look to the piece, which I assume is the other thing you want).
Photoshop will not be able to make photos taken with a snapshot camera look like ones made by a pro.
I work for a newspaper and adjusting whites to be bright is very important so they don’t reproduce muddy. One trick I use is once you have the photo open in PhotoShop go under: Image > Adjustments > Selective Color. Under the drop down menu choose Whites and pull out as much black as you want. That should pull some of the grey cast off of the backround. You might go under Neutrals as well and back off some of the color. Hope it helps.
-Paperback
Hi Thanks for your reply.
Don-i do not have a professional lighting setup, I am happy with the quality of the pictures….just looking for a way to remove the grey background without actually having to crop round each image in photoshop.
Paperback-thanks for the tip, I will try it out and see if it helps.
thanks
perhaps shoot through a write piece of cardboard. The light, if directed correctly will bounce back and reflect off of the paper and not the camera, and at least soften the shadows. Also a translucent wall of white mylar could help diffuse the light if built around the subject.
Maybe try opening up Image>Adjust>Curves (ctrl+M), select the white eye dropper on the right and click in the grey that you want to be white. See if that helps.
-ninja
Cheese
I am not a pro photographer (although for a while I was a newspaper photog). But I am pretty sure that most studio shots use at least three lights. Main, an accent light, and a backlight to prevent shadows.
Carol, and probably others here, are photogs, and will know more.
A lot of jewelry and silverware photography is done with white paper cones around the object. Lights are aimed at the cones from outside. The camera lens pokes in through the top.
The light is very smooth, with few shadows, and only a small black circle at the top where the camera lens sticks-in.
The example linked above was done with a big white surface above the object. Lights point up at that white surface (or show through from behind it).
flat white translucent mylar cones allow light to pass better. for no shadow the jewelry can be set on same mylar but flat and lit from below to reduce shadow; maybe a layer of glass for stability underneath. But this all takes more sophisticated lighting setups to get the light correct.
You could always take pictures on a darker background and remove it with magic eraser once you take the image into photoshop, but you risk reflections from the dark surface that might appear on the jewelry.
maybe, (just a maybe), you might be able to put the jewelry on the scanner and take the shots that way for certain pieces. raise the scanner lid off of the subject to reduce the shadow. I dont know how the cathode light will look on the jewelry but it is an easy thing to try.
just a few suggestions, otherwise it can be done easily by photoshop with earlier suggestions, it just takes a little time. PS is a great tool but it is just that, a tool.(no offense intended yous guys!)
You can achive that pretty well with Photoshop’s tools.
First natural window light is best
Then you can adjust curves to lghten things
You can use the dodge tool, and then the burn tool to define areas that need to be stronger
You can feather edges a lot and then use the eraser to further whiten.
(All of this dependenat on duplicating layers and using blend modes)
I’ve used the above here in my Highkey Gallery. <
http://www.sapphirestudios.net/gallery/highkey>
The easy way is to use a QP card placed on the edge of the image, then when you open the image apply levels and use the eyedropper tool on the grey patch, that will neutralize the color and adjust the exposure, then crop the card out of the image. The QP card is a card with white, grey and black patches.
Jorge
I think Jorge is right on target. Sure, it will adjust the colors in the subject, but I would think they’d probably look better. If you’re not happy with the subject changing, just mask it out. Shouldn’t be that hard with a solid background.
I’m a professional photographer with over 4 decades of experience in advertising illustration, that’s my credentials…here’s my advice: you need only one light-the sun.
But not directly, instead use open shade with the subjects on a white surface, if that’s your preference. Control the exposure
by taking a light reading from a gray card, or use your hand as a substitute. If possible adjust white point to avoid blue cast. I still use this technique for large subjects on location
Dutch Dremann
Dutch,
I didn’t know anything about the Nikon Coolpix 5400 <
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp5400/>. It’s a 5.2 mega-pixel digital camera with built-in flash and a 5.8-24mm (28-116mm equiv.) f/2.8-4.6 Zoom. It offers manual exposure, something called "Flash Cancel" (which I hope means to turn it off), macro focussing–but I don’t know if it does manual focus.
you need only one light-the sun.
Most soft-light methods should be fine. We often envelop small reflective objects in white, to control reflections and smooth the light; it also softens shadows. If you want to eliminate most shadows, keep the light angle low. You might want to wrap the camera in a white T-shirt.
I hope "gauge live" turns-off the Nikon’s on-camera flash.
Control the exposure by taking a light reading from a gray card, or use your hand as a substitute.
I’d probably get arrested if I tried to use my Pentax Digital Spotmeter at an airport.
Most photographers now rely on automatic exposure, which makes an underexposed mess of predominantly-light subjects–the problem that many of the posts in this thread are trying to correct. The Nikon has "Beach/Snow," "Museum," and "Copy" exposure modes–one of those may help. If you can get the exposure right in the camera, you can save time in Photoshop.
Who’s next?
Gauge live is already using diffused light, the cocoon is a diffuser, the problem is underexposure, you can correct it on camera, or in photoshop sampling a gray patch, or even with the white dropper on the white background.
Jorge
For evenly lit subjects, I often use a grey card and look at the exposure on it. I then set the camera to manual and use those settings. Actually taking a picture of the grey card lets me nail the color balance for THAT set up.
Bill
Bill,
The alternative to that is to meter the b/g. +2.5 stops will then peg that at white…
the root cause of the problem is that the camera is NOT properly white balanced. You need an 18% grey card. Put that in the lighting tent. Then let the camera calibrate to that. I believe the 5400 can be custom calibrated, but am not positive.
This is what I would do with my Nikon D1x if needed…
The discussion about 3 point lighting is good but only addresses shadows, NOT the fact that the WHITE background is shooting as GREY. That’s because the camera’s exposure meeting is attempting to compensate for the all while field. You get the same thing with pics of snow.
hope that helps!!
Mark
a professional photog – lol
To get truly shadowless lighting you need the support underneath the jewellery to be translucent and lit from underneath to about 2-3 stops brighter than the top lighting (as DOMTEK suggested in an earlier post).
In commercial photography this is acheived with a translucent sweep table, with a light tent surrounding the jewellery. (These can cost some serious dosh, but you could rig one up yourself with imagination). You might also consider using a dulling spray (e.g "Krylon") to reduce specular reflections, but this can also reduce the "zing" of the image. You may have to Photoshop out the reflection of yourself and the camera as well.
For exposure in traditional photography, you would use a good flashmeter, and then bracket some, or take Polaroids. For digital you can afford to bracket extensively, but start with spot metering off the jewellery or a grey card to avoid the white surround influencing the reading. Probably use the manual exposure option, since you will want to control the depth of field carefully as well.
For white balance, as long as the top lighting and bottom lighting are the same type, e.g. tungsten studio lights, then just do a Custom white balance off the white background or a grey card in the first test shot (or wait a few months for Nikon’s promised RAW file software for their 5400 model!)
Any form of opaque background, white or not, is going to have shadows directly under the object which are going to cost you some time in PS to crop out, as you have discovered. Rather like 16-bit files, it is best to start with the best possible shadowless, well-exposed and white-balanced image using traditional photographic skills BEFORE it hits the Photoshop editing stage.
Mike
Another tip: The light meter in a camera doesn’t know that the background is (supposed to be) white. It just sees a lot of light reflected, and advises to stop down.
I usually take a light meter that measures the light source in stead, so it neglects the reflective properties of the surface.
This way snow etc. stays white.
Rob
