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zulufoto · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 289 Location: www.zulufoto.com

Since there seems to be alot of us who get rejections with white backgrounds for "poor lighting," maybe someone who's mastered the technique (both shooting and in post edit) can shed some light on how to reduce the # of rejections we're receiving.

Anyone?

mantonino · Joined: 27 Oct 2004 Posts: 1090 Location: Syracuse, NY

Quick tip on this - once you're done isolating, open Curves. Move the curve around from grabbing the center - up and to the left a bit. If the brightness helps, you may want to play with brightness/contrast a bit, dodge the subject, etc. to get the shadowed look off the front of the subject.

Once you've isolated something and turned the entire background BRIGHT WHITE it "dulls" your subject a little sometimes (like the waffle thread). Add a bit of dodge/saturation/brightness/contrast depending what it needs.

zulufoto · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 289 Location: www.zulufoto.com

I guess i should include what I have been doing, with mixed results.

I duplicate my original layer and paint the white background "white". I then add a mask to that layer and clean up all of my edges (this is tricky sometimes to get the edges clean).

As a result, I get rid of any inconsistancy with my white backgrounds but it's kinda a pain in the butt to do it for alot of images in a batch.

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:12 pm

Needless to say shoot it right to begin with which means lots of good well placed light!.

Next, lets take an image that has some obvious problems like this one, and step by step walk you through it.
So here is the beginning and the end result

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:15 pm

So how do you get from one to the other

1. Lasso the image as close to the subject as you can or care to.
2. Under "SELECT" select "inverse", then hit delete

Ensure that the BACKGROUND color is 255 white!

at this point you should have something that looks like this

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:17 pm

Now
select an new adjustment "Levels" layer and adjust the left most (black) end of the slider toward the right so that you have something that looks like this

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:23 pm

Make sure that you are actually working on the background layer and not the "Levels" adjustment layer.

Now using the "DODGE" tool selection set on "Highlights" with an exposure set at about 20% and an appropriate brush size with the "hardness" set at about 50%, simply go around the images at 100% size and clean up any residual stuff.

Finally, reselect the "Levels" adjustment layer and delete.

You will then have the desired result of clean backgounds

jeffbanke · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:30 pm

The advantage of this methodology is that it can be applied to things that were not shot on white backgrounds such as this

Getting to this

zulufoto · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 289 Location: www.zulufoto.com

Jeff,

This is fantastic and exactly what I was looking for! I didn't think the dodge tool would be effective in getting a pure white background but it seems more effective than my method.

Thanks,

Bryan

kgarvelink · Joined: 21 Sep 2008 Posts: 10

Here is my workflow for white backgrounds.Please bear in mind this is geared towards a lightbox shot.

1.Use adequate number of lights, make sure lights are rated btw 5000-5500 kelvins.This will make sure your lighting is white, and not too warm or cold.
2.Use a high quality tripod with a ball head.
3.Camera in manual mode, mirror prelock, remote shutter with speedlite for fill flash.
4.Set a custom white balance by placing an 18% gray card in box, focus manually.Set your custom white balance off this.I usually use a bounce flash, manual, angled at about 40 degrees.
5.Use a small aperature for your small items.
Now for editing...
1.Crop and rotate as needed
2.Go to enhance, colors, color curves.Use lighten shadows.Move top slider to right, second slider to right, and bottom to left until image is clean wi 255 background.Maybe test your background to make sure its all 255.
3.Go to lighting, levels.I usually only have to make a small adjustment on the left here, the right should be stuck at 255 if everyting worked.
4.Tweak your saturation (I shoot the camera neutral, so I have some room here.)
5.Adjust sharpness.Out of all the tools, I have found that the actuall sharpness control at 1.2 and 60% adjusted for lens blur works best.This will vary with what lense your are using.

Hope this saves some of you some time.

zulufoto · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 289 Location: www.zulufoto.com

Jeff, quick question...I followed your workflow and with levels, it seemed to clean up nicely. However, I did a brightness adjustment layer and lowered the brightness all the way down and found additional issues. Any ideas?

leprechaun · Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 268 Location: Somewhere, ON

Wow, Jeff.

Thanks!

kenny123 · Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:20 am

If you cannot control background:

-To Isolate Objects against a white background:

Photograph your object using any background, Then:

a) Zoom in 200-300%.
b) Use the pen selection tool to chart an exact path around the object.
Get it perfect.
c) Click on working path Icon in paths palette
d) Select> Modify> Contract by 2 pixels. Smooth by 3-5 pixels.
e) Select> Inverse-.
f) Select> Feather by 0.2 - 0.5 pixels.
g) Make sure foreground black/background white - Press Delete.
You now have isolated object on white background.

Regards, Ken

nrassadko · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 41

cbarnes1 · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:01 am