SAN FRANCISCO – When you’re selling items on shopping sites such as eBay and Etsy, presentation and marketing are just as important as producing a high-quality product. Customers are bombarded with images of goods of all shapes and sizes. Since they can’t try things on or test them out, it’s important for you to provide a clear, accurate, and appealing representation. Even if the cashmere scarf you knitted is beautiful in person, no one will want it if it appears out of focus, looks poorly lit, or sits wrapped around your unshaven friend’s neck.

Luckily, you don’t need to hire a photographer or use a professional studio to take great product shots. Simply follow these steps to cast your product in the best light and please the eye of would-be buyers.

Choose Your Equipment

When you’re on a shoestring budget, the best camera for product photography is the one you have. The cameras on modern smartphones are of extremely high quality–the Droid Razr and iPhone 4S, for instance, each pack an 8-megapixel camera. You can find many options for camera accessories, too, such as external lenses and tripods for smartphones–especially for iPhones. (For details, check out our list of must-have iPhone camera accessories.)
If you can afford new equipment, an interchangeable-lens camera or a digital single-lens reflex camera is the best choice for high-quality shooting and easy manual focusing. Both camera types usually come with a kit lens designed for zoom versatility; for the best results, however, a dedicated macro lens or wide-aperture portrait lens might be worth the extra cash. (See the “Choose Your Lens” section on the next page for more information.)
Between those two extremes are your standard point-and-shoot cameras, which are much more affordable than the average DSLR or interchangeable-lens model. Most basic snapshot cameras cost around $200, but at that price they usually don’t offer significantly better quality or controls than a high-end smartphone camera. For about $300 to $500, you can buy a higher-end point-and-shoot camera with a wider aperture, manual controls for focusing, and a zoom range that provides ideal focal lengths for both wide-angle (24mm) and macro photography (50mm and up).

No matter what kind of camera you use, a tripod is essential if you lack steady hands and want a consistent angle on the product while you change the lighting. Miniature tripods, such as the bendy Gorillapod, are handy and affordable. At the very least, find a solid, flat surface to rest your camera on while snapping each shot.

Understand Your Camera

Some external lenses can make your photos look as if you captured them with a more expensive camera, but other lenses are suitable only for novelty effects. For product photography, stick to the macro lens attachments. If you encounter any distortion, blurriness, or trouble focusing, ditch the attachment and stay with your original lens.

You have no need to shoot in full-manual mode for basic product photography, but you should understand how to focus your camera manually and turn off its automatic flash. Check out PCWorld’s guide to camera basics for guidance.
If you are using a smartphone, try an app that lets you manually focus and edit easily. The Camera+ app for iOS and the Camera 360 app for Android, for instance, let you take and edit your photos right on your phone.
Be careful to avoid using distracting effects. A tilt-shift, blurring effect can make your product stand out in the frame, but a retro or comic book effect won’t provide an accurate representation of your product. If you’re using the default iOS camera app on the iPhone, make sure that HDR is off.

Once you have turned off the flash, choose a focus mode that allows you to select a single point in the frame–called “Single-Point” on Nikon cameras and “Manual AF Point” on Canon cameras. This mode is extremely common in DSLRs, and it’s available in many higher-end point-and-shoots as well. In this mode, the camera automatically focuses on a point in the frame that you’ve chosen; an empty square marks this exposure and focusing point in the viewfinder or on the live-view screen. On iOS and Android phones, you can simply touch the on-screen objects to adjust focus and exposure automatically.

Choose Your Lens: Wide vs. Standard

With a point-and-shoot, extend your lens as far as it can go optically for the basic shot of a stand-alone product. Be careful not to zoom in digitally, as that will do nothing but compromise the quality of your photo. Many point-and-shoots have a “macro” mode in-camera that can be great for capturing details and shrinking the depth of field so that your product stands out in the frame.

If you have a DSLR or a camera with an interchangeable-lens, you may have different lenses to choose from. The classic approach to product photography is to use a longer lens (50mm or over) to avoid any distortion of the product’s appearance, but online entrepreneurs are becoming more creative. Long lenses are ideal for product photography because they can provide a thinner plane of focus and cause very little distortion–perfect when you’re taking the basic shot of a product.
But you’ll also want to take secondary photos showing the product in a setting that suggests how it can be used. For these shots, a wide-angle lens can provide context since it allows more room for background objects and scenes. Be careful not to go too wide, though: Below about 24mm, you start to enter fish-eye territory.

If you have some cash to spare, you may want to splurge on a macro lens for your DSLR or interchangeable-lens camera. They’re top-notch for getting in extremely close to show the intricate details of your handiwork.

Choose Your Background: Natural vs. Studio

Aim to show your product in an environment in which it would be used, or on its own against a simple, blank backdrop. For my examples, I wanted to show off my cousin Lexie Fisher’s handmade dinosaur mugs.

Natural Lighting

For a naturally lit photo, push a table up against a window on a cloudy day, or cover the direct sunlight with sheer curtains. You want the light coming through the window to create a bright, natural, blank background. The curtain will create diffused light that won’t cast harsh shadows or cause glare. Place your product on a surface with an interesting texture, such as natural wood for a rustic, handmade item.

One popular technique used in tech-product photography is to capture the product as well as a bit of its reflection in the surface it’s sitting on. This is an easy trick to pull off: Putting the product on any dull, reflective surface, such as a dark, glossy piece of paper, will work for this effect.

Turn off all the light fixtures in the room to prevent color contamination from lights, which normally cast a different color temperature than daylight does. Then, set up some mirrors and a large, white surface to shine the window light back onto your product. You could spend hundreds of dollars on professional reflectors; for most purposes, however, a white posterboard and some makeup mirrors are perfect. Light your product so that it appears slightly darker than the light coming through the window. Then, set the exposure for a medium-to-dark spot on the product, and shoot away.

For secondary photos, use a wider lens (between 24mm and 50mm) and pair your product with items that match the aesthetic you’re trying to convey. For example, to shoot a handmade mug for sale, I placed a shiny red teapot out of focus in the background, and a crossword puzzle in the foreground. I poured hot water in the mug to create steam, and I made sure that the angles of my props led the viewer’s eye toward the product.

Studio Lighting

To create a studio situation, you can make a backdrop out of any large, thick piece of paper and some duct tape. Place the paper so that it makes a soft angle, to avoid showing the hard edges of the paper in your shot. To create dynamic lighting, turn off all unwanted lights and black out your windows. Use two lamps with the same type of bulb, set at alternating angles. (I used two 20-watt fluorescent bulbs from my desk lamps.) You can use any bulbs available, just as long as they both give off the same color so that your camera can automatically adjust and portray your product in its true color. Therefore, don’t have more than one type of bulbs, such as incandescent, fluorescent, or LED, in one shot.

To prevent glare and harsh shadows, you can diffuse the lights by placing a piece of 8.5-by-11-inch printer paper between the bulb and the product. Don’t attach the paper directly to the bulb, which poses a fire hazard. Instead, ask an assistant to hold it, or prop it up with clamps between the bulb and your product. You can also “bounce” the light to make it appear softer: Simply direct the light toward a large, white, reflective surface, such as the posterboard I used in the natural-light example, and angle the reflection toward your product.

A long lens is best for studio situations because it will keep the shot tight enough to exclude the edges of the backdrop. If you have a large backdrop, you can include contextual objects for secondary photos.

Go Easy on the Editing

Any basic photo-editing software, such as the free Windows Live Photo Gallery or the $99 Photoshop Elements, can help you level out and color-correct your photos manually. Though it’s fine to run your product images through Photoshop, keep your editing simple. Be careful with Auto-Fix, HDR, and retro filters that might manipulate the color of your product or darken the clean white background that you rearranged your furniture to create. And resist the temptation to cut and paste your product image into a celebrity’s hands. ]]> http://pcworld.com.ph/take-great-product-photos-for-your-online-store/feed/ 0 http://pcworld.com.ph/digitalfocus-show-off-your-high-resolution-photos-online/ http://pcworld.com.ph/digitalfocus-show-off-your-high-resolution-photos-online/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:05:39 +0000 Jon http://pcworld.com.ph/?p=4414

By Dave Johnson
October 6, 2009

In a lot of ways, megapixels aren’t that important. You’ll never be able to detect the difference between an eight-megapixel and a 12-megapixel photo when looking at the picture on a computer screen, for example, because your monitor only shows about one or two megapixels of information anyway. So unless you’re making poster-sized prints or doing a lot of deep zooming and cropping, who cares how many pixels there are?

The Value of Pixels
If you take a high-resolution photo, there’s a lot of detail locked away in your image. You can zoom in and get a good look at minutiae in the background, for example. It’s fun to see how much you can enlarge the image and still see somewhat sharp, meaningful visuals that you never noticed when you took the photo to begin with.

Unfortunately, few people ever get to see those subtle details. When you share a photo in e-mail or online, you generally need to shrink the image down to a manageable size, throwing away most of those pixels in the process. What might have been a few thousand pixels of unexamined action way in the background gets reduced to a dozen indistinct pixels. Even if you print the photo, it’s still too small to really appreciate all the detail that’s locked into the original photo.

Closr Unlocks Your Details
Recently, though, I stumbled across a free Web site that helps to address this problem. Closr lets you upload your photos in all their original, full-resolution glory. Eight megapixels? 10? 20? No problem–the only limit is that the file must be under 100MB, which isn’t a problem since even a 12-megapixel photo is typically only about 3MB or 4MB.

Because you can upload such large photos, Closr is also a great way to show off enormous panoramic photos made by stitching together several high-megapixel images. I have panoramas that are 20 and 30 megabytes in size, and Closr accepted them without a hiccup.

To use Closr, you’ll need to register with a screen name, e-mail, and password. Then upload a photo, and you’ll see something like the screen shown on the left.

Once uploaded, your photo appears in a “widget” on the Web site, which you can use to pan around and zoom in to see some of the details that your many-megapixel camera captured. The real magic happens when you go full screen. Click the icon in the very upper right corner of the widget (with the plus sign) and the photo will go full screen, where you can zoom in and pan around without the somewhat claustrophobic frame of the small gadget. This is an especially great mode for viewing panoramas, in fact.

Sharing Closr Photos
You can share your uploaded photos by sending the URL in e-mail. If you have a Web site or blog, you can embed the widget. Copy the script at the bottom of the page and you’ll get something like what you see on the right.

That’s not a static image; the widget is interactive, so you can click in the picture and drag it around or use the zoom buttons for a better view. You can see it in action by visiting my blog and playing with it yourself.

I could complain that Closr doesn’t really take full advantage of the resolution in your photos. You can only zoom in a bit, which is disappointing when I know there’s a lot more detail locked away in the photo. But it’s free, and it’s a good start.

Get Your Vignette Set
Begin by creating a duplicate layer: Choose Layer, Duplicate Layer, and then click OK. You should be working in the top layer automatically, but you can verify where you are by checking the Layers palette on the right side of the screen; make sure the top layer is selected.

Next, select the region that you want to preserve. Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool (fifth from the top on the left side of the screen). In the Options toolbar, set the feathering to a fairly large value; the more pixels in your image, the bigger your feather value should be. For my sample photo, which is 800 pixels wide, I chose a feather of 50 pixels. Now draw a rectangle that contains the part of the photo you want to keep.

Burn Your Photo’s Edges
Back in the days of film and darkrooms, you could control the look of your prints with techniques called “dodging” and “burning.” As you exposed a print, for example, you could cover part of the photographic paper on which you were exposing the image. The resulting effect (dodging) would make the obscured section lighter than the rest of the image. Alternately, you could expose another section of the photo longer (burning), and that would make it darker. Burn part of the photo long enough, and it would turn black.

Digitally, you can apply the burn effect to add some subtle vignetting to a photo. You can work with any image, but it helps to start with one that is already predominantly dark overall, like this shot of my son’s marching band taken at a nighttime football game. You want to focus on the middle of the image by gradually darkening both sides, until the left and right edges are pure black. I’ll show you an easy method that relies on the Photoshop Elements Levels tool.

Add Some Shadows
You’re almost ready to add drop shadows, but first you need to expand the canvas around the edges of the photo. Select Image, Resize, Canvas Size. Switch the unit of measure from inches to percent, and then enter 110 for both height and width. Click OK. You should see that the canvas has expanded, and a transparent border should surround the edges of your photo.

Now it’s time to experiment with drop shadows. In the Effects palette on the right side of the screen, click the Layer Styles button (second from the left) and then choose Drop Shadows from the menu. Now you can drag any of the drop shadow presets from the palette to your photo. If you don’t like the one you dragged, replace it with another. When you find one that suits your image, save your finished product.

Drop Shadows: Prep Your Photo
To get started, open a photo in Photoshop Elements. Make any changes you want–tweak the colors and exposure, for example–and then crop the image to your satisfaction.

Because the drop shadow effect is designed to work on a layer, you need to promote your photo to layer status. To do that, find the Layers palette on the right side of the screen and double-click the image, which should be identified currently as ‘Background’. The New Layer dialog box will appear. Click OK. Your image is now a layer, indicated by the name ‘Layer 0′ in the Layers palette.

Give Your Photos a Lift With Drop Shadows
Adding a drop shadow effect to the edge of a digital photo seems to elevate the image off the page (or off the screen) and give it a little extra life. This subtle effect adds some interest without distracting from the image itself. In Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, drop shadows are only a few clicks away.

Add Special Effects to Your Frame
A solid-color matte is fine for some photos, but what if you want to get a little fancier? Most photo editing programs have custom frames that add visual flair to the image. In Photoshop Elements 6, for example, start by turning on the Content palette (click Window and then Content).You’ll see two drop-down menus at the top of the pane; click the one on the right and choose Frames.

Next, find a frame that you like–the program has almost 200 of them in a variety of colors, styles, and shapes–and drag it from the Content palette into your photo. The frame will automatically wrap around the image, and, depending on the specific frame, it might also change the size and formatting of the photo at the same time. Use the frame’s sizing handles to fine-tune your arrangement and click the frame’s check mark to keep your changes.

If you don’t like the frame, you can always choose Undo, or drag a new frame into your photo to replace the current one.

Make A Simple Matte
The easiest way to create a frame is to surround your photo with a solid background. In Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, choose Image, Resize, Canvas Size from the menu and then add some extra “padding” to the picture. A simple way to do so is to click in the menu and choose Percent, and then set the width and height to 110. Click in the color box and select a shade that suits the photo–I tried a rosy hue. Click OK to exit. If you don’t like the size of your frame, you can always click Undo and try again with a different value.

As you can see, you can use this technique to create a built-in matte, and then print and frame the result. Or you can use the border as a completely digital frame for your photo, even if you never plan to print it.

Use Adobe Photoshop Elements or another image editor to add picture frames, drop shadows, and other border effects to digital photos.

Virtual Frames Add Real Aesthetics
It’s no secret that the right frame, finished in the perfect color and style, can improve almost any photo. Artists knew about the power of frames all the way back in the Renaissance, and–based on the amount of time I spend at the local frame shop–my wife is aware of this as well.

Of course, if you print out a digital photo, you can insert the paper into a traditional frame. (Or, you can display your snapshots on the screen of a digital photo frame.) But did you know that it’s easy to create a virtual frame in a photo editing program? You can leverage the aesthetic power of frames, mattes, and borders to enhance your digital photos, even if they never leave your computer.