Product Photography

[Pat Redmond]

Hi Guys,
I have been helping a friend do some product shots of clothing. She makes kids clothes, so they aren't huge, but still too big for a small light tent.

We are putting the photos on the website, so we want the background perfectly white. The only way we have been able to achieve this is by deleting the background in photoshop. This is OK, but takes time. I have created a photoshop action which gets most of the way there, and only requires a little bit of tweaking.

What we have done to this point is use a contrasting background (so, if we are photographing a pink dress, we might use a green background) to make it easier to be removed in photoshop. We found that using a white background made it difficult to remove in photoshop. We have two studio flashes (very old, and without many settings, but they work OK). One is 45 degrees left, and the other is 45 degrees right. They are both at the same height, and with reflective umbrellas.

Are there any suggestions as to what we could improve? The major challenge is shadowing - it is difficult to remove in photoshop, and always seems to keep a touch of the background colour.

Should we invest in a light tent? As we aren't doing jewellery photos, I don't think it will help much. But will it get rid of the shadow? Would softboxes work better...?

Any tips, tricks or thoughts would be a great idea.

Cheers,
Pat

[jjphoto]

I've never tried it, but a 'trick' I've read about is to use a proper projection screen as the background. The reflective surface of the projection screen (which has small glass spheres in it) reflectects the light entirely so it makes it much easier to get a pure white background. Like I've said, I've never tried it but it sounds like it might work well, as long as the lights are set accordingly.

You might try shooting the clothes against an opaque background which is evenly backlit. A peice of acrylic or similar might work well.

JJ

[fillum]

Not something I'm overly familiar with but my understanding is that over exposing the background will push it to white. Some one posted this link a while ago - it refers to portraiture but might be useful in your case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDGn4VzEOlU.

This method might require purchase of a new speedlight, but you could probably get away with one of the cheaper third-party models with a built-in slave trigger.


Cheers.

[Pat Redmond]

Thanks for the link! The downfall is that the clothes are right on top of the background, so putting a light on the background alone isn't really an option. But the link is great - he has some good tuts!

[reaction]

how bout some white seamless and hanging clothes in front on a wire? then a light on the background