Product Photograhy Advice

[whitey83]

I'm currently helping set up a website for the family florist shop and was looking for a bit of advice on the product photograhy.

Here's the pictures taken already :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45117988@N07/

I've edited them down to the size they will be shown on the website.

We have a limited budget so I don't want to be spending a fortune on lighting etc and also it's not really convenient to have a studio type setup with lights etc due to the limited space in the shop.

At present we're just taking pictures with a white blind as a background. We can't make all the products up fo the website, get a perfect setup and then take all the pictures because it would be too expensive and pictures are only taken when things are ordered.

Do these pictures look OK? I think they look not to bad myself however I think they'd look much better with a pure white background - which I intend to do in photoshop but I'm not sure on the best way to do this.

If someone could offer advice on how to get the pictures looking better I'd be very greatful as I'm not really clued up on it.

Thanks in advance.

[14-7]

I think for a florists website they'll be fine to be honest.

I don't think you're online flower purchaser will be bothered about seeing totally white backgrounds or anything as long as the colours stand out well and give a good impression of what they are buying.

[Ed_P]

I think you may have some White Balance issues. You can see this because the background colour varies with each shot. Auto White Balance could have difficulties in this situation because of strong and varied colours of the subject matter. I'd be tempted to try Flash or Daylight White Balance and see how the images compare with the true colours.

Edited by Ed_P on Monday 30th November 14:19

[bobfrance]

You are right, whilst the images are acceptable, the changing tones of the background are distracting. It is best to get this right from the outset as opposed to having to alter it afterwards. If you can, turn off the AWB on your camera (set it to what ever is appropriate - tungsten etc. Though Kelvin is better) and always shoot under the same lighting conditions.

To roughly adjust in Photoshop go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENT > Levels... pick the middle eyedropper of the three and click on your background. This will set the grey point, but beware if it is too far out it will change the colours of the flowers. To prevent this you could drag a selection which excludes the flowers.

Hope this helps!

Edited by bobfrance on Monday 30th November 14:33

[whitey83]

Thanks for the replies.

Here's how the product look on a website - http://robertwhiteford.limedemo.com/catalog/ - It's not the website (so ignore prices etc), I just put that up quickly to see how the products will look surrounded by a white background and they don't look that good.

I'll try the different suggestions with the camera settings and see how I get on. Having read up it looks like it will be impossible to get a pure white background without using photoshop with the setup I've got, or even with a geat setup. Although obviously the whiter the background the easier it would be to edit it by just adjusting the levels slighty.

I think the main problem with the different backgrounds is that all the pictures are taken at different times of the day and the large shop window provides a lot of the lighting meaning it's not possible to always shoot under the same lighting - which is obviously the main problem.

I've tried using the eye dropper tool in photoshop but as you said it just distorts the colours of the flowers too much.

I tried this tutorial - http://jyoseph.com/give-a-drab-lightbox-photo-a-cr... - but the layer mask part doesn't seem to work so I'm obvioulsy doing something wrong.

Could you clarify what you mean by "drag a selection" if it's not too much trouble.

Thanks

[whitey83]

Forgot to add. Would it be worth getting an 18% grey card?

[Ed_P]

whitey83 said:

Forgot to add. Would it be worth getting an 18% grey card?

Yeah, I forgot that too. Excellent advice ...

[beano500]

For the purpose of a website, I'd be inclined not to get too hung up about the WB shift. As long as the flowers and greenery are a close representation. Trying to correct your WB now will be quite painful, and blues/purples are notoriously difficult to capture for digital sensors at the best of times, so you could tie yourself in knots. If you wanted, just take the background out to a whiteout. The flowers themselves are reasonably evenly illuminated, contrast and vibrance are OK - enough to show the effect. But are you really only going to display that at the size of your trial site? If you enlarge it might be different.

[Nick M]

whitey83 said:

Forgot to add. Would it be worth getting an 18% grey card?

That, or an Expodisc.

It does the same sort of thing, just arguably quicker and easier to use.

I tend to use mine in tricky WB situations and it does help get things a lot closer to where they should be.

[bobfrance]

Sorry, by "drag a selection" I meant selecting the area you wished to adjust. Due to the size of the finished images, you may be able to get away with doing this quite coarsely by using the magic wand tool to select the background (done multiple times whilst holding down shift) until you have it all. Then using the Lasoo tool (whilst holding down 'ALT') to de-select the bits you dont want. Apply a touch of feather [SELECT > FEATHER...] then delete, fill or paint over the selected background with white.

If you could it really would be better to get some light on that background, preferably a flash or a modelling light - anything, the stronger the better - to get rid of the background.

Personally I think the shots could do with a longer exposure anyway, which might at least help blow out some of those dodgy shades.

[andy-xr]

I use an XRite, there's a Lightroom plug in especially for it. Makes things much easier.

You need more light, and better use of it. Have you options on a couple of flashes instead? Doesnt need to be a full on studio setup, you could probably do what you want with a pair of flashguns and matching brollies

[whitey83]

beano500 said:

For the purpose of a website, I'd be inclined not to get too hung up about the WB shift. As long as the flowers and greenery are a close representation. Trying to correct your WB now will be quite painful, and blues/purples are notoriously difficult to capture for digital sensors at the best of times, so you could tie yourself in knots. If you wanted, just take the background out to a whiteout. The flowers themselves are reasonably evenly illuminated, contrast and vibrance are OK - enough to show the effect. But are you really only going to display that at the size of your trial site? If you enlarge it might be different.

When you say "take the background out to a whiteout" do you mean edit it out in photshop? Sorry I'm not really familiar with the correct termanology.

The trail site doesn't show the different sized images. The site just shows the size for the listing. The images will then be bigger for the product pages (was too complicated to set up like that just for testing)and the size on flickr will be the enlarge product size. The default oscommece just uses one images and resizes them so I've just used that to get an idea of the product listing view.

I've added the medium size (product page picture) to flickr. So the product pages and enlargement are on their and the sizes for the product listing are shown on the test site.

[whitey83]

Nick M said:

whitey83 said:

Forgot to add. Would it be worth getting an 18% grey card?

That, or an Expodisc.

It does the same sort of thing, just arguably quicker and easier to use.

I tend to use mine in tricky WB situations and it does help get things a lot closer to where they should be.

Thanks I'll have a look at that.

[whitey83]

bobfrance said:

Sorry, by "drag a selection" I meant selecting the area you wished to adjust. Due to the size of the finished images, you may be able to get away with doing this quite coarsely by using the magic wand tool to select the background (done multiple times whilst holding down shift) until you have it all. Then using the Lasoo tool (whilst holding down 'ALT') to de-select the bits you dont want. Apply a touch of feather [SELECT > FEATHER...] then delete, fill or paint over the selected background with white.

If you could it really would be better to get some light on that background, preferably a flash or a modelling light - anything, the stronger the better - to get rid of the background.

Personally I think the shots could do with a longer exposure anyway, which might at least help blow out some of those dodgy shades.

Thanks again. I'm not very familiar with photoshop so I'll have a play around with it and see how I get one. Obviously I'll need to get good at it.

I'll definitely get something to improve the lighting as that's clearly the main problem.

[Simpo Two]

Actually as you're a florist and not a photographer I don't mind the images - they're not perfect but they do the job of selling flowers.

I appreciate you don't want a studio set-up, nor to spend loads on lighting - and you probably don't want to get embroiled with white balance and grey cards. In you position I'd use Auto WB, get a flashgun that you can point up to the ceiling, lay the flowers on white paper and shoot. It will probably be 2-3 stops underexposed, so then dial in +EV (read the manual!) until the white paper looks the way you want it. The bounce flash will give an even illumination and soft shadows under the foliage for a bit of depth. Watch for white flowers over-exposing though.

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 30th November 15:57

[whitey83]

andy-xr said:

I use an XRite, there's a Lightroom plug in especially for it. Makes things much easier.

You need more light, and better use of it. Have you options on a couple of flashes instead? Doesnt need to be a full on studio setup, you could probably do what you want with a pair of flashguns and matching brollies

All I've got access to is a camera and tripod.

Yeah flashguns and brollies would be ideal but we don't really have the option of having everything setup all the time due space and it's not ideal to spend ages setting up just to take the picture of one product, remove setup the set up again if something different that hasn't been photographed is made. Which obviously means that no matter what I do I'll never get brilliant pictures and they will need to edited quite a bit.

[whitey83]

Simpo Two said:

Actually as you're a florist and not a photographer I don't mind the images - they're not perfect but they do the job of selling flowers.

I appreciate you don't want a studio set-up, nor to spend loads on lighting - and you probably don't want to get embroiled with white balance and grey cards. In you position I'd use Auto WB, get a flashgun that you can point up to the ceiling, lay the flowers on white paper and shoot. It will probably be 2-3 stops underexposed, so then dial in +EV (read the manual!) until the white paper looks the way you want it. The bounce flash will give an even illumination and soft shadows under the foliage for a bit of depth. Watch for white flowers over-exposing though.

Edited by Simpo Two on Monday 30th November 15:57

Yeah I think they do the job of selling flowers and in gernal the flowers look nice enough. It's just that having a whiter background / pure white background would make the website look much more professional. Although the fact that it's not totally white does seem to give a bit more realism to the photographs unlike some of the large on line flower sellers.

I'll have a look into flash guns and see if I can possibly get a loan of one to try before buying one.

Thanks

[Simpo Two]

NB: The bounce flash idea assumes you live in a 'normal' house with white-ish ceilings. If you live in a barn it won't work!

[whitey83]

Ah. The ceiling is slightly off white (due to age) ceiling tiles. Would that be OK?

[jon-]

I was snapping a few pictures of the cat a while back on my landing, which has a deep red painted wall. Took me a few shots of bounce flash to work out what was going on with the white balance. Everyone has blonde moments