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 How to Photograph Pads  By Obsidian Well... you can just point and click with the camera, but I'm talking about making the pictures as clear and "professional" as you can make them. A lot of it is your own personal choice as to what you think looks best, but here are some tips. Firstly, take the pictures outside or in natural light if possible. It gives a better result in the photo - it's brighter and feels more alive. See these two pics below for example. Both basically the same pad (one is overlocked and the other is T&T but that paisley fabric is the same). See how the one taken outside against the leaves looks brighter and more vibrant than the one taken inside (and that inside pic was edited to increase brightness)   If you can't do it outside, then put all the lights on, but normal household globes tend to set off a yellowish glow.... which will affect the look of the fabric (You can later correct that with a graphics program however). Some places say to use filtered light - not direct sunlight.... it's up to you. Direct bright sunlight can be too much, but a mildly sunny day, or late in the afternoon I find works best. It also depends on if you are photographing something shiny or not. Fabric won't reflect light, so it's a bit easier to photograph. Backgrounds.... very important.... This will show off, or disguise your product.... depending on what you choose. It can also set the tone. Personally I like plain white, so it's invisible... you see only the product, but that's virtually impossible to achieve straight from the camera without fiddling with it in a graphics program... Second to that I tend to like natural settings - since I like to promote the eco-friendly aspect of pads, it helps tie that in. So we'll explore some other background types that don't require tweeking.... Think about something fairly plain itself (so it won't detract from your product), but is interesting enough not to look boring.     (Passionfruit vine, Bamboo placemat, a patch of grass & dried leaves, A patch of flowering ground cover, floorboards)   
(concrete, rose bush and a woven bag)  So, think about things like stones, twigs, bamboo mats, pebbles, plants, floorboards, fence pailings, hanging up on a clothesline, anything in nature.... But be aware that some backgrounds work with a pad, some do not - you might have to use different backgrounds for different pads. See the other article on photographing pads for more info on backgrounds. If you do decide you'd like to go with a white background, here is how I do it. I don't have a very fancy graphics program, so some of what I do might be able to be automated in something better.    2 ways to do this.... either use the freehand/lasso tool to draw around the entire pad on the edge of the pad (like you see in the closeup)..... then you will end up with a surrounding line of "running ants" - you need to then invert the selection (I have a "selections" menu where I can select "invert") so that when you hit the delete key, all the background part disappears (if you don't invert it, the pad will disappear!). The other way is to flood fill the background with white. This can unfortunately also colour the pad or the stitching if it's light... so I find the best way to do this is to use the dropper tool (if you have one) to get the colour of the background (normally a greyish green), and flood fill that. Which should fill most of the background with that colour, leaving some patches of other colours (you can see some dots in the picture that weren't coloured in the flood fill) Repeat this for all the background, flood fill then select any of the colours remaining and flood fill with that colour until it's all one shade, then floodfill with white.
  
If there are any extra bits in the way (the edge of the paper in this example), cut those out, so it's all white. Then you may need to resize the image if it is too large (In something like Congocart where the image is resized automatically for displaying on the screen, I like to make the picture I upload about the size of a photo/postcard.... so that customers can click the photo to see a larger version).. and sharpen it if it is a bit fuzzy.  
Sharpening the image makes a subtle, but important difference All done!
So we've gone from this......... to this...... worth a little effort? I think so
Another option for you (particularly if you've taken the pic against a background that doesn't crop out as easily, like a dark background) is to use the "blur" tool. This also shows you the difference between photographing inside (the pictures above) and outside (the pictures below). This is the same fabric. Look how different it looks in normal household lighting above, and brighter outside lighting below (The outside ones are a more realistic version to the actual colours too) To do this, take your image, and roughly cut around it with the lasso tool so that the edges are all white (remember to invert the selection so you're removing the background, not the pads). Then go in closer and select right around the pads.... then get a blur tool (I used the "Gaussian blur") and make it as blurry as possible.  
And there you go: 
Admittedly, this was a quick job with a picture I'd already taken and cropped, because ideally you'll leave more space around it so that you can make sure the edges are all completely white so it blends into a white background. My version does get chopped off a bit... but you get the idea.
http://www.alzodigital.com/photo_guide/tent_application_guide_white_background.htm http://webdesign.about.com/od/graphics/ss/aa100406_3.htm |
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