Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - Isolating on white background. What material ?

rupertx · Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 46 Location: Scotland UK

What material is best for shooting items to isolate on the white background. ?
A large number of mine end up a little grey, despite using a flash.
Is it the lighting letting me down or is it the actual backing material ?

Thanks in advance

chitema · Joined: 23 Feb 2005 Posts: 257 Location: Spain

I take my pics against a white background and then fill it in in photoshop. Do you have ps? My backgrounds are never white before putting them through the ps treatment.

rupertx · Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 46 Location: Scotland UK

Hi Graeme..
Yes I have Photoshop 7.
Do you mean you literally remove the object and place it back on a white background or do it by some other means ?

JTeffects · Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 294

a lot of photogs use seamless paper. its big, and not exactly cheap, but it does work quite well. I plan on getting some sometime after I move. For now I use a crappy white nylon material for models and posterboard for small objects. I try to over expose the background for models by placeing a light on just the background, because of the crappiness of the nylon it will reflect a bit too much sometimes and that annoys me to no end, it also has a tendency to not lay flat. So I use photoshop and either erase to white (carefully) or dodge (especilly around hair) to white. All of these were taken on that crappy white nylon and edited.

Tim · Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 458 Location: UK

Clear Back lit perspex. Gets rid of nasty shadows too.

Haven't tried it properly yet though.

I got a 4' x 2' sheet for �15 ($27?) I ahve two flourecent bulbs (�18, $30?) but still need to sort out some decent diffusing material. At the minute It's going to be greaseproof paper....

I love experimenting :-) Saw a table top studio for sale at jessops for �400 and figured there's NO WAY i'm paying that for a table!

chitema · Joined: 23 Feb 2005 Posts: 257 Location: Spain

What I do, and I am not an expert so someone may have a better method, is to take the pic against a white background and then use the magic wand tool to select the background. Then I paint over the background using a largish brush in white, or black.

JTeffects · Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 294

chitema, the problem with the magic wand is that its not that itelligent. Thats why I use the eraser or the dodge tool. Sometimes it can work, but you have to watch the edges and make sure they arent all jaggy and blunt.

LizV · Joined: 07 Nov 2004 Posts: 290 Location: New York

I use white poster or foam board and overexpose it a bit. I never use the flash. The first step I use in processing is levels. Once opened, slide each end of the graph until it reaches the black .. the right side adjusts whites, the left darks. If I over-exposed it enough, then usually it just needs some cloning in a few spots from a really white area.

Here's a sample .. nothing in my portfolio is "isolated".

StuartE · Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 8:17 pm

Backlit perspex is the easiest 'non software' solution to getting 'on white' images... any material lit from the front can suffer from texture coming through... bear in mind that the goal of your exposure metering in the camera is to give you a nice average grey shot - if you have a lot of bright white in the image, the exposure will be set to turn that grey by default... :-)

Selections with the magic wand are OK if you have very good seperation from your object, but there are a huge variety of selection techniques that yield better results - chances are, if you're shooting on a single colour background, a contrast mask will work quicker and better - especially once you've done a few...

Even with the steadiest hand, a 'selection' will usually benefit from conversion to a mask, and then a couple of pixels worth of gaussian blur applied to the mask - that'll create a smooth edge, effectively round off sharp corners, and the mask can be brushed onto if you need to add, remove, or fine tune any edges... I will get round to a 'tip' on better masking sometime soon... or maybe a Q&A thread of it's own...

Cheers,
Stuart

Tim · Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 458 Location: UK

Stuarte. YOu hit the nail on the head.

I had most of my "isolated" shots rejected at first. (Is just bumped up the levels until the bacgroud went white then re-set the grey values. Not clever.

I think a thread in itself with a proper tutorial would be a VERY good sticky here!

lisafx · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 5:30 pm

I have been using a white sheet lately with pretty good results. I kind of blow it out in post processing using levels and then go around with the eraser like others have suggested.

For selecting an object that was not shot against a white background, I have just recently discovered the pen tool. It's time consuming, but you get a really nice clean line with that by putting the anchor points where you want them. Once you creat a path by using the pen tool, then you make it into a selection in the paths palette. Blur by one pixel for a smooth looking line.

This seems to work well with everything except fur and hair. Anyone have any suggestions for fur and hair?

elvinstar · Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 47

Most of you are lucky because i have ps6 I think but don't know much about it. Only what I taught myself. I have tried to follow some of the advice stuarte has given in another thread but I am having a tough time because I am not advanced enough. I suppose it just takes a lot more practice. As for getting white, have you tried your white balance on your camera? On some cameras you can set it manually. Of course the more liight the better!

Tim · Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 458 Location: UK

White Balance is more of a colour thing mate. To stop casts. I'm not sure If it can alter exposure details.

njezzo · Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 7 Location: Brisbane

Check out http://www.dphotojournal.com/hard-difficult-extractions-with-photoshop/

Just one of the methods to select the foreground and change the background with any colors u want..

Bob Ainsworth · Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 499 Location: Oklahoma

Quick 5 second fix

Step 1

Step 2