Product Photography

[maria102]

I've taken a lot of pics for our website of the clothing using a tailors dummy. Just a few queries on editing them:

If I crop them so they all have the same amount of white space surrounding them, what size should I be aiming for to upload them, as they are currently about 2.5 meg each? also, how do you get them to the same size? I'm just using Gimp at the moment to adjust the brightness etc?

 

[maria102]

Bumping my own thread here - but I haven't got a ferkin clue what I am doing, how do you make them all look the same etc? the background looks a bit dark on a few, is there a way of lightening this bit only?

 

[Astaroth]

If all the items are on the same dummy then normally you would take all the photos from the same place so they are automatically with the same amount of background/ white space around them - with all photography it is best to get the photo as close to perfect straight from the camera rather than relying on fixing it in PhotoShop (or equiv) after as it is much more time consuming. Likewise for pictures that are intended to look like a set use as close a settings each time as possible to minimise the photoshoping required

The cropping should be done simply for getting the part of the photo you want. Once you have this you would then use Image -> Scale Image to get it to an appropriate size, depending on how large you want the user to see the image will dictate the correct size but I would be surprised if it is anything more than 800px along the longest edge.

There are a couple of ways to lighten the background. The simpliest to explain is to create a layer mask and colour in the foreground objects you want to protect (black areas are unprotected, white areas are protected). When you then make any subsequent changes such as Levels or Brightness it will only change the black areas - you any grey areas are partially affected.

 

[maria102]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I've worked out that if I reduce the size of the jpegs by 50% they are about the right size to upload, and you are right about getting as close as possible, I 've realised I've done that in the later ones. I've now uploaded two test pics and one the backgrounds is significantly darker which is probably due to the fact that I took them over two days.

 

[Poppy Design]

Hi

You will need to make sure the resolution is set at 72 dpi (DOTS PER INCH) to start with and save all images "for the web" as jpegs.

For web use you should be aiming for images 50 kb or under (yes sure there are plenty of us with broadband but still quite a few with dial up or similar....ignore them at your peril)

I would think 400 pixels wide is more than big enough for a general product image but play around with it - depending on the software used it may size them all to a set width anyway.

If you are using Photoshop to edit the photos the auto light/colour settings can be pretty good.

Joanne

 

[maria102]

Righto, I've downloaded a copy of paintshop pro (i've used it before) and the resizing appears to be relatively straightforward as you can do it in batches, however... I can't get my head round the masks and how its possible to colour in the background so they all look the same ...anyone with paintshop pro experience? though I think creating masks in either paintshop pro or photoshop may very similar?

 

[Deleted member 9840]

Some body mentioned this site on an earlier post.

Would this tutorial help?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Lasting Designs]

Great signature steve

 

[henrycrun]

Have a quick look at the Oxfam online shop.
All the photos will have been taken at 5MP/flash off and cropped to minimise the background by different volunteers each day. No post processing.

 

[Mister B]

Great signature steve

Ditto. The thanks were for making me spill beer over my keyboard

Mister B

 

[maria102]

Have a quick look at the Oxfam online shop.
All the photos will have been taken at 5MP/flash off and cropped to minimise the background by different volunteers each day. No post processing.

Thanks, but that just won't work with our design, each photo needs to have the same background.

 

[dingbat]

Forget changing background colours in software, unless you're Dreamworks or someone it will look crap as the peripheral colours of your object and shading against the background are not precise enough. It will look like some cheap effect from Dr Who in 1978.

Get yourself a decent background and also use lighting - no need for expensive studio lamps..just some Ikea/Argos specials to experiment with.

Also get a tripod (very cheap £10 odd) if you don't already have one.

 

[maria102]

Forget changing background colours in software, unless you're Dreamworks or someone it will look crap as the peripheral colours of your object and shading against the background are not precise enough. It will look like some cheap effect from Dr Who in 1978.

Get yourself a decent background and also use lighting - no need for expensive studio lamps..just some Ikea/Argos specials to experiment with.

Also get a tripod (very cheap £10 odd) if you don't already have one.

Really? We've already taken most of the pictures and despite taking them at the same time of day pretty much the background light is variable. Really its on about five images that are larger on the site that need the same background, I've just found this link - is this not going to work?

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1166553896584

 

[dingbat]

Really? We've already taken most of the pictures and despite taking them at the same time of day pretty much the background light is variable. Really its on about five images that are larger on the site that need the same background, I've just found this link - is this not going to work?

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1166553896584

Well, I've tried dragging around an object to remove the background with the same feature and it didn't look good. It will really depend on the object. Obviously Corel will show the best example.

Can you just not try and use the lighting features of the graphics application?

 

[Kazzy]

I have found the easiest thing to use for editing photos is paint.net - it's free, and you can download extra add-ons for it depending on you want to do. There is also a long list of tutorials on how to achieve the things you want.

If you are trying to remove the background from a photo, providing the background is simple and there isn't too much detail in it, you should be able to remove it just using the Magic Wand tool (this comes in Gimp and I think probably PSP also). That will select the area you want to remove (you can adjust the amount of detail it takes) and make it vanish.

 

[silklink]

Hi Maria. I agree with Dingbat and a few others. It is best if you can set your studio up and shoot your subjects in one session all with the same settings. As Dingbat suggests it need not be expensive for extra lighting, backdrop and tripod.

GIMP is capable of selecting a background colour and converting it to an alpha channel for transparency. You can then add your own plain white background as an additional layer to sit behind/under your image layer. Trouble is, your photo will have a subtle mix of colours (shades) in the background, which makes it difficult to select a single colour. It can be done but it is a pain and you tend to loose quality at the edges of your subject. Even worse, your subject contains bits of the same colour you are selecting. That's why it is good to get the quality right in the photo.

You can open each photo in GIMP and then 'Save as' a JPG format (export it and set it to the offered 85% quality or better). This preserves your originals. Then with the new image, Image>Scale Image. I think 400px width is about right, just my preference. Save it again.

Good luck

 

[Astaroth]

GIMP is perfectly fine for what you want to do though you may want to look at GIMPShop as it has a more user friendly interface (or at least one closer to PhotoShop).

If you want to send across a photo or two we can certainly have a quick look for you

 

[maria102]

I've downloaded a copy of paintshop pro, its better than Gimp? still the backgrounds are variable - just having another bash now, although if someone is offering to take a look at around 4 pics and offer suggestions, I would be eternally grateful

 

[Astaroth]

As with most packages it is more of a case that it is different than better.

I dont mind having a quick look at the photos on GIMP here if you want to mail them - may not get time to do it this afternoon though as have a client meeting shortly.

 

[Phirefly]

Hi Maria, I've finished for the day and would be happy to see if I can help - PMd you

 

[Fuzzy]

Maria, we are doing exactely this as we speak for our new site
I use Photoshop to adjust photos and then Irfanview to batch resize them all (we had ouver 1000 photos see)

Easy peasy to use for lil ole Fuzzy