What are some exceptional examples of Product photography?

10 Key Tips for Product Photography Exceptional examples from Photo Solutions

We recently received a query from one of you about tips to carry out a good product photography. After doing several searches in the hundreds of articles published. I observed that we had not written anything like it, so I promised to treat it in a future article.

With today's article, I fulfill that promise and I offer you 10 tips so that the next time you consider addressing the product photography you have a good handful of guidelines and recommendations to put into practice so that you can get a good result, how about?

What is Product Photography?

In the introduction, I have assumed that you know what product photography is because you know what it is, right? In case you do not know exactly what it is, we could say that it encompasses those photographs or images through which it is about selling or simply presenting a product.

For example, photographs of electronic components, clothing, automobiles, footwear, food products (such as the right image), etc.

Product photography, therefore, is one that is used to present a certain product and the quality of this photograph will depend on the degree of acceptance and the desire to acquire the product. Hence the importance of these photographs.

Tip # 1: Choose A Neutral Fund

We often get used to not giving enough importance to a fundamental element in our photographs: the background.

Unless you have a fantastic background that you think is going to perfection the product, my recommendation is that you do not complicate and choose a neutral background: white or black are the best usually work. In addition, if the product photo is then intended to be integrated into a web or catalog, the white background, especially, will provide you with a better and easier integration.

You can find support kits with studio funds or specific light boxes for product photography at a very good price. Otherwise, you can also use the "low cost" option: use a sheet, a card or even the white or black parts of a 5 in 1 reflector.

One last piece of advice, both for white and black background, when adjusting the brightness of the shot, verify this brightness through the histogram of the different photographs that you are making.

Tip # 2: Lighting Is Fundamental

Once you have prepared the background and, therefore, the environment in which you will carry out the photographs, the next thing is to adequately prepare the lighting. In this sense, let me offer you some recommendations:

The greater the natural light, the better. If it is possible to make these photographs on the street, the better. Although you may need some element to diffuse the light, having a lot of light and very diffuse is fundamental for product photography.

If you opt for the aforementioned white background, you have different alternatives to achieve it: a softbox if the size of the object allows it, or a background of paper, foam, fabric or even vinyl. If we are talking about a large object, I recommend you take a look at this article in which we show you how to get a completely white background.

If you do not have enough natural lighting, or you just want to have one more point of lighting, you can use lamps or flashes. If this is the case, try to adequately blur the flash or illumination of the same through sheets, papers, umbrellas or more specific accessories. You can find interesting kits, both continuous light, and studio flashes. You can also opt for Strobist photography kits.

Product Photography

It also values the use of a home or commercial reflector to fill shadows too hard for artificial lighting.

As you can imagine, to achieve "adjust" the operation of all these accessories you will need to perform different tests, but I guarantee that with the use of each of them you can have fantastic lighting.

Tip # 3: Use A Quality Goal

Product photography requires a professional result and for this, it is necessary to have a good lens. An object that provides enough quality for the result to be worthwhile.

Therefore, we will look for a quality zoom lens, or, better and cheaper, a fixed focal length that will allow you to have fantastic features with the best quality/price ratio.

Tip # 4: A Tripod Will Be Very Useful

To achieve the desired result you will have to perform many tests, vary the location of the camera, the product, the camera settings, the properties of the lighting, the background ...

For all this, it will be essential to have a good tripod that allows you to maintain the characteristics of framing and composition and, in addition, offers you that stability that enables greater clarity and longer exposure times values (if necessary).

Therefore, in this type of photography, do not hesitate, always use a tripod. Your photos will thank you. If you also have a remote trigger , or you set the camera to fire after a timer, the better.

Tip # 5: Clean And Prepare The Product

Before starting to pull the trigger it is very appropriate that you properly clean the product so that it looks without a pinch of dirt or dust. And, why not, the camera lens.

It is also possible that you have to place some of the components or parts of the product, vary their position in front of the camera, or even decorate it in some way to achieve a good result.

So do not forget, prepare everything well . It is preferable to have everything in order before taking the pictures that you have to do then wonders with your touch-up application to eliminate imperfections that you could have avoided with due care in the previous phase.

Tip # 6: Set Up The Camera In Manual

Until you reach the desired result you will have to make different adjustments, changes in the location of the accessories, variation of the intensity of artificial lights, focus point, perspective, etc.

For this reason, to have full control of the result, it is more than advisable that you choose the configuration of the camera in manual mode so that you control all the parameters: aperture, exposure time and sensitivity.

With regard to these adjustments only two recommendations: it uses a reduced aperture (f high) to have enough depth of field and uses the lowest possible sensitivity to avoid the appearance of noise.

In addition, I also recommend shooting the flash or flashes in manual mode to have more control of the intensity of the flash and that the focus mode is also manual (so you can adjust it and you can leave it fixed between shots). Also with respect to the approach, if you have Live View, activate it.

Tip # 7: Do not Forget to Perform a Proper White Balance

Product photography must be true to reality (reaching, if possible, to improve it, but not to transform it completely. Of course, to achieve this fidelity it is essential that the colors photographed are those of the product, right?

For this, you should be very careful with an adequate white balance, since, otherwise, the photograph may not be an adequate representation of reality. To achieve this, there are two tips:

Shoot in RAW to be able to vary the white balance in the editing phase without this implying a loss of quality.

Use gray cards to fine-tune the white balance in the editing phase.

Following these two tips, you will be able to respect reality, at least as far as color is concerned with photography and reality.

Tip # 8: Varies Product Position and Perspective

Remember that product photography seeks to sell the product, make it attractive, different, dynamic, desirable. To achieve this, in addition to following the four previous tips, you must offer a different photograph.

Arriving at this different photograph may require you to try different perspectives and angles from which to take the photo, perhaps also having to vary the position of the object: keeping it in motion, placing it diagonally, next to other objects, etc.

Product Photo Editing

You can help multiple accessories to modify the position of the object: invisible threads, structures, platforms, etc. Do not discard any option to offer a more attractive position of your product.

Tip # 9: Editing Photography Is Not an Option. It is an obligation

No matter how good the photograph has been, do not rule out at least a brief editing process to:

Adjust the white balance

Define the level of whites and shadows

Apply a slight focus mask

Even, if necessary, a small re-framing

These adjustments will finish polishing a good product photograph and leave it ready to teach all potential customers and leave them with their mouths open.

Tip # 10: Repeat The Process With Several Photographs

I'm not saying you go back to number 1 and start again, what a scare, right?

What I mean is that to achieve a good product photography, you have to discard a few, so when you decide to make a session of this type, try to take different images varying the parameters described lighting, position, perspective, etc. ., to achieve a good range of possibilities.

Once you have all these variants, edit the best and finally, decide for several of the photographs that best present or allow to sell the product.

If you need any Photography, Fashion, Wedding, Product, Automotive, Real Estate, Jewelry, Portrait, Glamour photo editing and Retouching services visit:

Photo Solutions
Photo editing services
Automotive photo editing
Photo Enhancement
Photo Retouching
Jewelry Retouching
Clipping Path Service
Product Photo Editing
Photography Post Production
Real Estate Photo Editing

How to Retouch Photos in 7 Steps for Natural Looking Portraits

How to Retouch Photos in 7 Steps in Photoshop Retouching for Natural Looking Portraits

Retouch Photos! The adjustments and adjustments that we are going to make in this article are intentionally more forced with the idea that these are more evident in the different photographs that we will use to illustrate the process. However, the general idea, and that we have commented on as an introduction to this article, is that they should be softer and less obvious. Everything is for the didactic.

I am going to retouch a photograph of a model of great quality with whom I have worked several times and who, besides being a great professional, is a great person. The photo as such just needs to be retouched very subtly but, as I said before, I will exaggerate to a certain extent the retouching so that it can be seen how they affect the image and we can all get a clear idea of the results.

1. Re-lighting the look

Sometimes, and due to the facial constitution of our model, the inadequate use of lights or other reasons, the eyes and the general look of the person we are photographing have worse lighting than the rest of the face. Therefore it is necessary to re-illuminate the look, fundamentally the eyes of our model.

For this, we make a wide selection with the Lasso tool of the whole perimeter of the look. We create a new layer with that selection by pressing Control + J (on the Mac you have to replace the Control key with Command).

Once this new layer is made, we open the level adjustment with Control + L and move the two corresponding slides to White and Midtones to the left. We must move them little by little to avoid that the white of the eye is " impaled", that is, avoiding that it remains as a white spot without detail.

We can observe that the illumination of the whole selected area changes, but we only want to re-illuminate the eyes and focus on them. To do this we create a layer mask in the Layers menu - Layer mask - Hide all.

If we have done well the effect disappears completely and in the Layers window, right next to the thumbnail that collects the layer with the eyes, a black rectangle appears, which is the layer mask that we have created. In the tool menu, we choose a white brush, low hardness, and low opacity.

I always use a brush of 0 pixels hardness and 30% opacity to retouch portraits.

Now we paint over the eye area, clearing each pass until we obtain more adequate lighting and pre-whitening the eyes. Once the process is finished, we merge the two layers in the Layers - Flatten image menu.

2. Elimination of color in capillaries of the eyes

In this picture in question you can hardly tell because my friend Miriam is perfectly rested, she is young and there are no big blood capillaries in her eyes. However, in most cases and especially with the fatigue and the ups and downs of modern life the eyes usually redden.

In addition, if we frequently use the flash "against" our model, after a long session it can cause an obvious redness in the eyes. For all this, I think it is necessary to soften this problem, especially in those people who normally have a crystal clear look and because of the issues discussed have their eyes reddened.

We proceed, as in the previous step, to perform with the loop a wide selection of the look. We duplicate the layer with Control + J with that selection and now we adjust the tone and saturation, by pressing Control + U. In the dialog box, we select from the drop-down the adjustment that only affects the red tones.

In the color bars, we add magenta and yellow tones moving the sliders in the form of dashes. With this, we extend the range of colors to be corrected and we can use it to eliminate other types of eyespots.

Once the range of color from violet to lemon yellow has been expanded, saturation is almost completely reduced and the luminosity is gradually increased until the reddish capillaries of the model's eyes look white but in detail

 .We accept the changes and we do exactly as in the previous step: we create a layer mask that hides the whole effect and with a brush, soft and of low opacity, with the selected white color, we paint exclusively the area of the eyes that have capillaries or It has more red or orange areas. Finally, we connect. We can see how it has changed compared to the beginning.

3. Smoothing dark circles

The dark circles on many occasions are not typical of the subjects we have portrayed. Although many people have what is called "perpetual dark circles" to another great majority only appears in concrete conditions of fatigue, sadness, etc. Miriam does not have any dark circles. They are just marked, and very little, a few lines of expression in the lower eyelid. Let's imagine that they are dark circles and we proceed to soften them. In this specific case it would not be necessary, but, as I said before, everything is for the didactic.

The first thing to do is to copy the Background layer to make all the adjustments on a copy layer and in the end to qualify the effect as much as necessary. Once the layer is duplicated, we proceed to correct each eye separately. We take the tool patch from the toolbar and select the circles under a certain margin on all sides.

It is very important not to select any element with details of the eye, ie, eyelid, or eyelashes or anything.

Save we drag the selection to an area of the face where there are no specific details of any kind, just skin. By releasing the selection we will see how the patch makes its magic and combines textures and colors to eliminate the marks of dark circles.

After the correction in both eyes we see that the effect is very sharp, so we proceed to soften it by lowering the opacity of the upper layer in the layer window. I have chosen in this case approximately 50%. This is at your discretion and according to the size of the photo and the relative size of the features of our model.

You should always leave some lines of expression to give volume and shape to the look.

If for any reason we want to adjust the opacity of each eye separately, we would proceed as we have done previously to make a layer mask and adjust with the brush each one of the dark circles. Once we have achieved the desired result, we finish the process by coupling the layers.

4. Elimination of wild hair

I call wild hair those hairs that end where they should not: they are crossed by the eyes, by the mouth, and on the forehead, for example. If we had had patience, we would have removed these hairs before taking the photograph. Sometimes they do not bother and even look good, but a loose hair on the lips or through teeth or eyes, from my point of view, should be removed. It is better to do it before taking the photograph, but if it has not been possible I will show you how to remove them afterward.

The first step is to create a new empty layer. For this, we select in the Layers - New Layer menu ... All the adjustments will be made on this layer and will not affect the original photograph in principle until we dock it. So any error that we discussed can be solved by directly deleting the incorrectly corrected elements from the layer.

We use another of Photoshop's magic tools: the concealer brush. Be careful, do not get confused and select the corrective brush version. Once this tool has been selected in the top options bar we must mark the following options:

Mode: Normal

Origin: Sampled; mark the

Option: Aligned

Show everything

For this type of retouching I always increase the zoom of the image at least up to 200 %, so I have much more control over the retouching and the different passes. Once the zoom is adjusted, pressing the space bar on the keyboard temporarily activates the Hand tool that helps me move around the image.

With the selected concealer brush and the adjustments I explained earlier, we selected a brush size that has a diameter larger than the thickness of the hair. And now comes the important: the sampled. To do this we press the Alt key of the keyboard and we see how the mouse pointer changes indicating that it is ready to take a sample and apply it to the correction. To do this we click right next to the hair we want to eliminate, taking into account that it is a smooth skin area with no details.

Now we paint with the concealer brush on the hair to be removed. We move through the image with the help of the hand and resample if necessary because the area has changed skin type or we have reached an area with detail. If we do it well with each stroke we give, we will observe how the hair disappears and is covered by "new skin" of the same color and texture as the original skin. Simply magic.

If we have some type of mark or trace, we must make several passes. Once all the wild hair has been removed on the face of our model, we proceed to attach both layers and it will look as if they had never been.

5. Removal of pimples and spots on the skin

One of the most effective retouches that are made in portraits is those that allow us to eliminate stains, marks, pimples and other skin defects. Do not confuse it with moles or freckles, which are distinctive features of our models and which, under the premises indicated at the beginning, should not be modified or eliminated. We will touch up those elements that we know should not be there in normal conditions and do not define at all the person we are retouching. The limit is put by common sense, even the reasonable thing is to sin by default and not by the excess (unless we have a clear assignment and is required by the circumstances).

Technically the process is exactly the same as we used in the previous process, in such a way that we create a new empty layer where we will be retouching the different marks and signals on the skin with our adjusted correction brush as we have commented previously. It must be borne in mind that the areas to be sampled should be smooth and without obvious details and make corrections little by little and not from a large area at a time.

It is much better to make several passes with a small brush and go sampling in the areas closest to the different brands that we are going to correct.

To illustrate the process I will also eliminate some other brand that is not such, but small moles of our model. We can, by regulating the opacity of the layer, have a maximum level of smoothing the effect. The more patience you have, the better your results will be.

It is very effective to change areas of the face to constantly touch up, thus avoid generating areas too smooth and processed.

The idea is to blur the process all over the skin. As an aid, we will reduce the zoom level until we observe the face in a global way on the screen. By the way, as in the previous step, the zoom should be between 100% or 200% to observe well the different types of spots and/or granites.

6. General skin softening

The smoothing of the skin allows us to correct possible rest that has remained of the different previous adjustments, so much of the elimination of wild hair as of spots and granites. But this touch-up is very controversial because it turns the models into porcelain dolls if it is adjusted excessively. It is not the time to enter the controversy, but those faces with porcelain or plastic skin have done a lot of damage to the photography of portraits, beauty, and fashion, since by removing almost any texture on the skin it seems as if "dehumanized "our photographs, turning the models into mere mannequins. So is it wrong to soften the skin? If it is done in a moderate and contained way it is not since it allows you to correct small mistakes that you have made in the previous retouching.

There are many methods of smoothing the skin, there are even specialized programs and plugins in this. We are going to use a simple method that uses the blur and combination of several layers of our portrait. However, even if it is a simple method it is long to perform and especially long to explain, so I decided to create an action that performs the whole process of skin smoothing so that only at the end we must interact to indicate the areas where we want to apply to smooth.

Download the action for Photoshop "Smoothing the skin"

To perform the smoothing of the skin, you only have to download the action and load it in the Actions window, by clicking on the drop-down menu that appears in the upper left corner. If everything went well, a new action should appear that is called "Foto24 - Smoothing skin".

Before proceeding, we make sure that we have all the layers attached by clicking on Layers - Attach image. Now we click on the action and it starts working, creating layers, changing their fusion modes and combining them according to the programmed. When the action is finished, a photograph with no apparent effect appears, and in the layer window, the background layer and layer 2 with its layer mask painted black that hides the entire effect. If we click on the layer mask while pressing on our keyboard the Shift key will deactivate this mask and we will see the effect applied to the whole image.

We see that the effect is exaggerated and also affects the whole picture, even the eyes, mouth, etc. Now it is a question of using a soft brush, of low opacity and of white color and to go giving small passages to the areas of skin that need to soften. With each pass that is given, the layer mask will be painted white and the smoothing effect will be stronger.

The areas to soften are cheekbones, forehead, chin, bridge of the nose and eye contour. It is important that the successive passes are applied little by little.

Once we have finished giving the different passes, you can still further tint the effect by forcing it or decreasing the opacity of Layer 2. Normally I reduce the opacity even more until the smoothing is left in its proper measure.

For this particular photo and after trying the opacity several times I decided to leave it at 33%. The result of smoothing is very slight since we do not want to turn Miriam into a mannequin.

7. Selective focus of the look, nose, and mouth

We are in the last step of the retouching, which consists of focusing those parts of the portrait that print character. I call this area "Zone T" and it is formed by the eyes, nose, and mouth. These are the three areas that we must focus on, but with great care and each one in its exact point.

In the following scheme, we see the elements to focus. We have marked with a red line those that admit a greater focus and orange color that we should focus more subtly.

In the eyes, we highlight the iris and the pupils and to a lesser extent lashes and eyebrows. In the nose attention is paid to the nostrils and curves of the fins, avoiding touching the bridge. Finally, in the mouth, we focus on the teeth and less on the lips.

Be careful with the eyelashes, we can fall into the failure to turn beautiful eyelashes into an "eyeliner" of the bad guys. In the nose do not have to focus too much on the nostrils, and on the lips should be careful not to contrast too much and oversaturate them.

For the approach, any of the known techniques can be used. I am going to explain to you one of the techniques that I use the most because of its simplicity and effectiveness, known as the high pass layer approach technique.

To do this, we doubled the background layer, as always by pressing Control + J. Once the layer is duplicated, we will apply a High Pass filter from the Filters - Others - High Pass menu. We see a dialog box whose only configurable element is the Radio. Initially, we mark Radio: 0,0 pixels, we will observe that our whole image becomes neutral gray. That means no pixel will be affected. We are going up little by little with the help of the slider the radio of the high step, and we see how the areas in more detail are "revealed".

You have to adjust the radius until the details of the eyes are completely relieved and a couple of more pixels. And do not worry if other elements are highlighted, since then with a layer mask we will apply the effect right where we want.

Once the desired radius has been applied, confirm the filter by clicking OK. Then we change the blending mode of the upper layer, which is the one that we have applied the high pass filter, to Superpose mode. We now see how the elements of the portrait are focused in more detail.

But as a side effect, we see that other areas have also been affected. This is solved by creating a layer mask from the Layers menu - Layer Mask - Hide All. Finally, we proceed with our brush of low opacity and hardness to paint the areas we want to focus on white. I give several passes in the eyes, in the teeth and some less in the eyebrows, lips, and hair. Although all this will depend on the photo.

We see in the following picture the effect deactivated so you can check the focus

Finally, I attach both layers. Remember to make the top layer visible again.

Once this step is completed we will have finished the 7 basic steps to retouch portraits with Photoshop. I remind you that the final effect has been reinforced deliberately so that the retouching is evident.

Try these 7 steps applying them to different portrait photographs and look for the "exact cooking point" since the personal taste of each one will mark the final result. To know go to Photo Solutions India

Now you know the 7 basic steps to retouch portraits with Photoshop, you just have to try them. And remember: the personal image of each one must be unalterable since it is the main feature that, together with the character, define our personality. Do not forget to share your tweaks and your tricks, techniques or concerns, we wait for you in the comments!
Photo Solutions
Photo editing services
Automotive photo editing
Photo Enhancement
Photo Retouching
Jewelry Retouching
Clipping Path Service
Product Photo Editing
Photography Post Production
Real Estate Photo Editing