How to make product photos look really good?

[deadlyblade21]

Tips please?

Is it about having a really good camera?

[digital*ghost]

---

@deadlyblade21 wrote:

Is it about having a really good camera?

---

No. 😛

I have a very simple point n' shoot digital camera, and a lot of my images aren't very good at all when they're in their original form - my camera is moody, it has problems taking shots sometimes, it also likes putting green spots in small places, other times looks like it's taking a very dim world view... Occasionally it gets half-decent shots, but to make up for ithe areas in which it lacks, I do a bit of editing after the image has been uploaded to the computer.

A quick overview of the best tips I can offer - I can go into more detail on some of these, but it might have to wait a while as I have a bit of work to do shortly.

For taking the actual photo (presuming standard digital camera):

• Use natural, but not direct, light.
• Use a background that doesn't compete with the item
• Avoid using the flash for most things
• Use the macro setting for small items or to get up-close details
• Leave a bit of space around the item being photographed so that you can edit it the way you want it later
• Experiment with different angles / views

For editing the image, try (free) programs like Windows Gallery, PhotoFiltre and online editing sites like PicMonkey (my personal fave - all the editing features I use at PicMonkey are the free ones). Play around with settings to learn how they affect your image (eg Windows gallery has an "auto fix" button, but I generally manually adjust brightness, contrast, reduce shadows if needed, minor adjustments to colour temeprature and the like.

You can also experiment with different cropping sizes, you don't always have to show 100% of the product in a gallery image - some very effective images might only show the main or primary features.

I edit a lot of my backgrounds these days, too, via Pic Monkey, just to try and get a bit more consistency happening (I upload my own texture and basically paint around or over the areas I want to).

[thecatspjs]

I'm lousy at taking photos.

After experimenting with different software (often quite complicated to achieve even the simplest improvements)  I have focused on compensating my poor skills through editing out the background of gallery shots.

I use web based clipping magic - it costs $ ie $8 for 100 photos per month or around $14 for 500 photos per month.

As I highly value my time, for me it is well worth the subscription many times over as it takes me between around 30 secs to 1 minute to edit out a background as the program does the work.  Very user friendly interface also. 

You can try the program without having to subscribe to see if you like it, you just can't download your efforts

[digital*ghost]

cats, have you tried FotoFuze at all? It's supposed to do the same as Clipping magic, but is 100% free (I quite liked CM and used it quite frequently for clothing images, but found it wasn't very good for silver items on white backgrounds.

 FF didn't seem to be quite as intuitive to me, but the basics are the same (colour by numbers idea, what to keep and what to remove 😄 ), and it's free. 

[thecatspjs]

Fanks very much DG for tip    I will give it a whirl.  

I had tried about a dozen other programs when they first started charging for clipart magic but that just led to frustration

Love these types of threads, always come away with tips !!

[egglesdtp]

I agreee with everything DG suggested, and would like to add a couple more. I find taking photos in the morning is better than afternoon, as the light is 'whiter', but that may be just the room I am taking the photos in. But with the whiter light, I get the colours more true and therefore photos require less colour correcting. You could experiment with taking your photos at different times of the day to see if it makes a difference.

As there is no way I could be bothered removing backgrounds, I use a cream blanket as the background for all my items, whether clothing, craft or household items. This way, I can also see if I need to correct colour, as I know the colour the background should be. My original photos are around 1 MB each, so there is plenty of wiggle room for cropping out excess background and still leave enough pixels for the gallery photos (I make them 1500 pixels along the longest edge).

I would need to know what sort of items you are photographing before offering any more suggestions.