how was this photo taken

[jbird]

this a pic of are good member Bobcat how in your opinion was this photo achieved

Josh

[mendedbowl]

it looks like the camera was almost directly overhead, looking down onto the item laying flat on a surface...there is a cast shadow on all four sides...so i would say he used a light box with four lights (one on each side ) but with more intense light coming from the bottom right corner in the picture as it appears here.

hope this helps.

someone had a wonderful plan for a light box in another thread. it may be worth searching.

ken

[Billsotx]

this a pic of are good member Bobcat how in your opinion was this photo achieved

Josh

Check here: http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2260 ... and scroll down to CitizenKate's thread.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Billsotx

[sfcdan]

Harbor freight has a photography box with lights, and camera for less than 40 bucks. Don't know how good it is, but looks good. hope it helps, Daniel

[AndyL1]

this a pic of are good member Bobcat how in your opinion was this photo achieved

Josh

I'd say the product was taken under a soft box and then the image clipped out, shadows painted back in via Photoshop. The soft gradient in the background is most likely a layer in Photoshop too. At least that's how I would have done it.

-Andy

[Tina]

Hi Josh,

I played around with one of your newer photos today, this is the resault:-)

[jbird]

Tina

Wow how did you do that my goodness that's a lot better

Josh

Hi Josh,

I played around with one of your newer photos today, this is the resault:-)

[shirleyz]

Tina

Wow how did you do that my goodness that's a lot better

Josh

Yes Tina!

How did you do that?

Shirley

[CitizenKate]

Here's a nice little tutorial for stripping out the background and other tricks for enhancing your product images with Photoshop. Most other photo editing tools have similar features.

Click here

Kate

[Tina]

Kate gave you a really good link:-)

The lines, text etc. Learn how to work with layers. There are a numbers of tutorials (very good search word) out there for doing things like this, I could never ever make one as good but in short:

1. I croped away the background.

2. Made some shaddows that I thought was the right angle and such.

3. I made an extra layer, put i behind the object, shaded some colors and that's the new background.

4. another new layer ontop of everything to make the new thinn lines...then some shaddows.

5. the last layer for the text and again, some shaddows...Voila:-)

Edited April 24, 2009 by Tina

[jbird]

Tina Thanks a lot.

Kate Thank you.

Josh

I will try my hand at it.

[dcobranding]

Can be made using gray paper and "blowing out" (over-exposing) a portion of the backdrop, or underexposing a portion of a white backdrop by position of the light.

A softbox over your light [which creates a larger light source] is most handy to do this.

[EDIT: A strobe type light is also highly recommended because it's nearly impossible to get enough light on the subject with a "hot light" (the kind that are constant light).]

Edited July 4, 2014 by dcobranding

[ConradPark]

You can easily do this with two light boxes, I bought a cheap two box set for £40 on ebay that works perfectly for me. Try one directed from the left corner in a 45 degree angel a bit away from the subject and one from the lower right corner directed almost from above. Use ordinary oven aluminum foil to get light bouncing/reflecting back from the sides. I would also say that the picture been heavily modified in a photo editing software, especially the background, while it's not difficult to achieve the affect, the difficulty is to make it look the same on all different products - hence it's easier to do a graded background in a software that you insert on every pic.

[Pinsplitter]

If you want to get a little bit serious.

The traditional studio Light Table looks like this pic.

It is transluscent perspex on a frame. In the old days of using film, "contouring" or "deep etching" to take out the background added cost to the customer, so you had to shoot the thing with a clean or graduated background that did not need any extra work on the film.

The basics of a white background is to have the light under the table twice as bright as the top lights (plus any side lights you might use), this is a "1 stop" difference in light levels.

If the bottom light is too strong the edges of the product will flare out a bit and look weak.

The product would be sat up on a block, maybe 2-4 inches high that can't be seen from the camera angle.

The curve of the background perspex will give you an even graduation from white to grey, or add another light to keep it all white.

If your product is small you don't really need any of the curvy bits (the front down curve is only necessary if you shoot from a very low angle btw.).

To make it really simple for a small product just two flat sheets of perspex could be used as in the RHS pic, making a V shape, get the top piece very close to the product, right over it, you should imagine the product is a mirror (it actually is as far as light and camera is concerned) so the top piece fully "covers" the product. White reflectors, card or foam sheet, can be placed on the right and left sides vertically as well.

You could do it with just 2 lights, strong ones 500 watt at least, 4 would be better, 2 top 2 bottom for even light, in Aus they sell "work lights" at hardware stores pretty cheap, tungsten-halogen lights in a square metal box, they would work pretty good.

The right and left sides can have more perspex pieces instead of reflectors if you want more light control with a light directed through each one.

This will be good if you are not a Photoshop expert, the pic will be fine to publish without more work, even if you can Photoshop a very clean white background helps to "contour" the product with the Pen tool, or even just Magic Wand the background to delete it if you are in a hurry.

A large example of the same technique is using a full Cyclorama, basically a white room with curved corners and just one open side for the camera and to get the product in, used for cars and also for very "high key" fashion shots, you can achieve very flat lighting so skin imperfections etc are almost removed.

That car pic is unretouched shot on film.

[dcobranding]

Nice work Pinsplitter. Thanks for the info.