CC Wanted

I took this the other day. I was playing around with different lighting etc, using a white piece of paper as a background. I am happy with the results for the most part, but am wondering what I could have done differently to get the background more white, rather than the grey it turned out.

The background I used was totally white paper, with the rings sitting directly on it. Is it a lighting issue? white balance? something else?

Any other CC is appreciated too... thanks

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It's just underexposed for the background to be white. Might try increasing contrast a bit too.

I'm thinking it's the white balance, because I just took an almost exact picture of a ring on a piece of napkin and it was pure white. You can see that picture here.

Here's a quick tweak on levels and it looked like a tad of light falloff on the corners so I fixed that too.

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JaertX wrote in post #2287670
It's just underexposed for the background to be white. Might try increasing contrast a bit too.

I wont tell you how long I played around with various WB and contrast settings.... but didn't touch the exposure. It looks like the exposure was my problem. It just looked OK to me, so I didn't touch it Thanks!

JaertX wrote in post #2287683
Here's a quick tweak on levels and it looked like a tad of light falloff on the corners so I fixed that too.

Looks much better... thanks!

VinceN wrote in post #2287678
I'm thinking it's the white balance, because I just took an almost exact picture of a ring on a piece of napkin and it was pure white. You can see that picture here.

Nice pic! Thanks for the input