Achieving The White Background Effect

[MikeRenardo]

I run a silk businness, and I recently purchased a Canon Powershot G3 to take pictures of silk ties for my website. I bought a photoflood lighting kit. Two lights, 250 watts each...

All I want to do is take pictures of my ties, nothing fancy, no creative photography. The only effect I want to create is the "white background." I don't know how else to put it, I'm rather new to this.

I'm sure every single one of you have seen pictures of a product with a completely white background. Right now, I'm shooting my pictures with a white display board as the backgrond. When the pictures come out, the tie looks excellent, but the background is a salmon type color. I want a white background because it will look better on my website.

Is there a special technique I can do with the camera? Or do I need to purchase a special type of paper/material for my background? Are my lights ok? (They reproduce the daylight spectrum)

Are there any other techniques that may be of use to me?

Thank you so much for your help.

[henkbos]

No experience, but I guess it might help if you replace the board with cloth so that the light gets absorbed.

Then there's always Photoshop to correct your stuff :-)

[MikeRenardo]

Yeah, I've tried using photoshop to achieve a white background. However, my ties sometimes cast a tiny shadow, making it difficult to use the magnetic lasso.

[slejhamer]

Not sure if this is large enough for what you are doing, but you could try to build (or buy) something like this table-top studio:
http://sell-it-on-the-net.com/online_store/tt_studio_kits.htm

[Ken Fong]

The lighting kit sounds cool.

For photoshop, the magnetic lasso can be tedious. The magic wand might work better (adjust the sensitivity as needed.)

Similar to what you are trying to do, there is a technique for making passport photos with a white background at:

http://www.ephotozine.com/techniques/viewtechnique.cfm/recID/252

However, the end result still has that 'cut and paste' look, even with the feathering. Probably not as professional as the lighting kit, but a lot cheaper to do.

Also, be sure to shoot in telephoto to reduce distortions caused by closeups.

[MikeRenardo]

Thanks for the tips! I'll try it out!

[geecee]

Try using a light to medium grey background. The background could then be lightened if neccessary using the Levels control in Photoshop.

Graham Coward
Melbourne, Australia

[ruby]

If you need a white background get Scotchlite. It will reflect your light and give you a perfect white Background with no shadows. We use it at work and it's great. We can move the lights around and change the intensity. Your cameras flash will set off the Scotchlite. Ask them for a small piece to try out .

[DavidValdez]

Hello,

Here is a technique I like to use when cropping out images. It's very clean easy to do. Once you master it cropping out images become very easy.

If you have a small Wacom Pen and mouse pad it will make your job easy. They run about $99 but take time to get used to the pen. But it is a great tool!!

Make a copy of your background image. Crtl + J. This will make a copy.

Make a new layer on top of your copy image, make sure you have that new layer selected in you layer pallete.

In your foreground color choose a very hot bright color. I like to use 0R 255G 51B.

After you select your color now select your airbrush tool (J)

Make sure your hardness is +100% and select the brush size that is easy to use. Start small first, trust me.

Now what you want to do is airbrush (I call it masking your subject) around your object. Cover the area you want to drop-out. Make sure to cover all edges. Make small strokes when you are close to your subject, if make a mistake by painting into the image press ctrl + z. I like to be zoomed in when I am doing this. About 200-300% but then again this depends on your resolution. Also when you reduce your image size the edges will get you a sharper. I like to have a high resolution image or a large size image.

Ok, once you covered the area you want to drop out(hint: I use a small brush around the subject that have tight coners. Once I have the image out lined I then increase the brush size) Now press Ctrl+left mouse button on the lime green layer (note make sure you click on the image icon not the word example like Layer 1 that has a diffrent function).

You should see a marquee or marching ants around the lime Green mask. Now go to your menu > Feather and enter 1 pixel click ok.

Now select your copy layer of your image in the layer pallete. This is important Then hit delete. Now turn off the view for the Lime green layers and the background image.

So you now cropped out your image. The feather makes your edges softer and does not look so hard. You can now place any background color.

Hint: I sometimes make a new layer, place it under the new cropped image and fill that with lime green and zoom in to view the edges of my crop image. If you don't like it. Delete it and start all over. That is why I had you make a copy of your orignal image. Alway do this if you are going to do any editing to a image. Anything!!! Trust me I have made those mistakes ;-)
If you made a mistake you still have the original.

I hope this helps. I use this method for fine jewelry. I prefer it better than the masking tool or magnetic Lasso.

I hope this helps. If need more help let me know.

David




MikeRenardo wrote:
I run a silk businness, and I recently purchased a Canon Powershot G3 to take pictures of silk ties for my website. I bought a photoflood lighting kit. Two lights, 250 watts each...

All I want to do is take pictures of my ties, nothing fancy, no creative photography. The only effect I want to create is the "white background." I don't know how else to put it, I'm rather new to this.

I'm sure every single one of you have seen pictures of a product with a completely white background. Right now, I'm shooting my pictures with a white display board as the backgrond. When the pictures come out, the tie looks excellent, but the background is a salmon type color. I want a white background because it will look better on my website.

Is there a special technique I can do with the camera? Or do I need to purchase a special type of paper/material for my background? Are my lights ok? (They reproduce the daylight spectrum)

Are there any other techniques that may be of use to me?

Thank you so much for your help.

[roncor]

MikeRenardo wrote:
I run a silk businness, and I recently purchased a Canon Powershot G3 to take pictures of silk ties for my website. I bought a photoflood lighting kit. Two lights, 250 watts each...

All I want to do is take pictures of my ties, nothing fancy, no creative photography. The only effect I want to create is the "white background." I don't know how else to put it, I'm rather new to this.

I'm sure every single one of you have seen pictures of a product with a completely white background. Right now, I'm shooting my pictures with a white display board as the backgrond. When the pictures come out, the tie looks excellent, but the background is a salmon type color. I want a white background because it will look better on my website.

Is there a special technique I can do with the camera? Or do I need to purchase a special type of paper/material for my background? Are my lights ok? (They reproduce the daylight spectrum)

Are there any other techniques that may be of use to me?

Thank you so much for your help.

Mike,

You probably already did this but you did not mention it. When you stated photoflood, did you mean continous lighting that provides around 3200K color temperature? If so, I would check to make sure that your camera's white balance is set accordingly. Try using a custom white balance specifically for the floods that you are using.

[Yance]

Yeah, the first thing to do is to adjust the white balance. Don't try to fix the image in photoshop when it is much easier to do it with the lights.

I assume the tie isn't laying on the board but is separated by a few feet? Maybe if it isn't, try hanging the tie sveral feet in front of the board. I'd suggest using one light to light the tie and the other to light the background. Adjust the background light closer to the display board until it appears white.

[NILOLIGIST]

Mike,

I think this might be the solution to your problem:

http://store.yahoo.com/greenbatteries-store/tabtopstudac.html

I am thinking of getting this myself. I want to photograph my future products, which is a line of cosmetics.

Good luck, hope this helps.

[ambassador]

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Oct 22, 2003

The 3M folks - the makers of the "Scotchlite" material menioned in this topic - tell me that there is no white "Scotchlite" material. Can you please tell me how I may obtain a sheet of this material so that I too can produce the pure white background that you mentioned?

Thank you.

Ambassador
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[ambassador]

ruby wrote:
If you need a white background get Scotchlite. It will reflect your light and give you a perfect white Background with no shadows. We use it at work and it's great. We can move the lights around and change the intensity. Your cameras flash will set off the Scotchlite. Ask them for a small piece to try out .


-------
Oct 22, 2003

The 3M folks - the makers of the "Scotchlite" material menioned in this topic - tell me that there is no white "Scotchlite" material. Can you please tell me how I may obtain a sheet of this material so that I too can produce the pure white background that you mentioned?

Thank you.

Ambassador
-------

[TSORoanoke]

Are the colors of your ties being represented properly on the screen? It has already been mentioned here, but I think that if "white" isn't coming through properly, then most likely the colors are not either. This would be especially true with the color cast you describe - its not "grey" but an actual color. There's something going on with the way the camera is reading "white".

[Longwatcher]

ambassador wrote:
-------
Oct 22, 2003

The 3M folks - the makers of the "Scotchlite" material menioned in this topic - tell me that there is no white "Scotchlite" material. Can you please tell me how I may obtain a sheet of this material so that I too can produce the pure white background that you mentioned?

Thank you.

Ambassador
-------


Not sure it is the same thing as described above, but it is scotchlite and white. Try product #3870, which is reflective sheeting. Although it seems to be limited to 48inches wide, which would require seems between pieces and I could not find cost. This material is normally used to make road signs (like speed limit signs)

[JMSetzler]

Interesting question here.. lots of people want to use photoshop to fix a problem that could be easily corrected with the camera :)

When you set these ties on your white survace, the first step, obviously, will be to have an ample amount of light coming onto the ties from at least two directions... three could be even better.

As someone suggested already, make sure your white balance is adjusted correctly for the light sources.

Metering this scene is the key to the exposure you want in the end. If you are using full evaluative metering, chances are that your overall image will result in underexposure. If you can't meter on a gray card for proper exposure in a scene like this, you should probably overexpose your meter reading by one stop since the white background is dominant and it also reflects twice as much of the light as it should for a proper exposure. When your camera compensates for the extra light reflected from the white, the result will be an underexposed photo.

:)

[BobPA]

I have to take photos of parts for the company I work for. I use three 3200K floods with white paper background. With PhotoShop I select the polygonal lasso. Zoom in to 200 or 300% and outline your ties with this. You left click on corners when you have to make a turn. After the tie is outlined select the move tool. Next under "file" select new. Set your size and resolution to be the same as your tie photo. You can set the background color to white. Reselect your tie photo. Click on the outlined tie and drag it into the new file that you created. You will now have your tie with a perfect white backgroung. You can then crop, flatten and save as a jpg. Hope this helps. Also I have never sent a reply in a forum so I hope I did this correct. I use a Minolta Dimage 7hi at work and just purchased a Canon Powershot A80 for home.

[kayti402]

I have had this problem in past as well. The white is not coming out as white because the background is underexposed. Maybe it is white balance but if so,other colors would not look right either.

Dustin Cannon
www.cannonphoto.net