Sunday, June 3, 2012

Cleaning up a Photo Photographed on White

     The photo below is the same one that was the last image in yesterday's blog. It's a Kilgore cast iron sedan from the 1930's.  I didn't "clean it up", so it has several grey areas. These areas are underexposed white material, and as such expose less that 100% white. 

     The best advise to give anyone when doing doing studio table top photography or any other photography in a studio is to get it done properly in the studio! 

Photography is a paid profession. As such, time is most important. So if you can photography 95% of your work in the studio and finish there, then you will be more productive. If you have to go to the computer to clean things up (like today) that will cost you money.  You can;t charge a client for  as that is what the "norm" is today. The client expects complete and finished work. AS such, you can charge more for excellent work, and that is mostly done in the studio.basic retouching. SPotting dust particles or painting some scratches can be used in Photoshop.

    The question then is how to make a clean white background in the studio? The grey areas above are the result of uneven exposure. What I would do is to move my lights farther back to spread out the light more evenly.  You could point your camera at different parts of the frame and see if the exposures are all the same. A second choice is to use more lights. However that can be more costly if you dont' have more lights, and more of a problem if you work in a confined area like me.

  Start in Photoshop with Image >> Adjust >> Brightness/Contrast

The brighter areas will whiten up more than the darker areas will overexpose or "wash out".

This is how the photo appears at the  0-0 position for brightness/contrast

This is the photo with a +15 increase in brightness

The next step is to erase the remaining  grey shades.

I  selected a medium-sized eraser, and a 57% hardness.

Imagine that the image above is the eraser with 57% hardness.

The outer and lighter area of the eraser illustrates the "softness".

What this means is that you can actually get close to the car parts and the eraser will not "erase" those parts.

You can also adjust the opacity which will allow you to get close, and not erase as much from the image, especially at the borders of white and car. In time and with moire experiences, you can change the opacity to 100%. This means that as you erase, you erase 100%.

Notice how close I came with the eraser,.

However, because the edge of the eraser is 57% hardness, the edge will not erase as much,if anything.

For finer detail and edges, simply magnify (enlarge) the image that you are working on.

You may have trouble seeing the edges and what you didn't erase.

What you can do,is simply to make the image dimmer or less bright.

Notice how the parts that I didn't erase show up better.

Erase just these darker areas.

When you re-adjust the brightness, all of the lighter-toned areas will disappear and appear white.

Here is the "cleaned-up image.

It will be too bright or lack some contrast.

Don't worry.

You can get better contrast with either :

Image>>Adjust>>Auto Contrast

or

Image>>Adjust>>Brightness/Contrast

Image>>Adjust>>Brightness/Contrast

If the detail in the highlights is disappearing, then simply go to

Image>>Adjust>>Highlights/Shadows

Image>>Adjust>>Highlights/Shadows

Notice how the detail in the yellowish tires has now returned.

Original Image

The final and cleaned-up Image

Don;t forget to save the photo by a different name, just in case you ever have to return 

to the original image.

Thanks for visitng, and as always, have a restful Sunday moring, afternoon, or evening wherever you may be.