IanT said:
any pointers for us photo noobs?? lol
O yes... of course.....
here are few tips... I figured it out somehow.... mainly trough trial and errors
1. Be careful when choosing background for your soaps photo. Usually only the white mat paper is enough because, nevermind how light is the color of the soap. Soap light reflection influences the final colour of background, so it is never really white.
2. Be sure to make your photos under the day light, or simulate such conditions in the room.
3. Do not wear any shirt or something which has warm colour (red, orange, jelow...). The best is to wear white, gray etc. Do not wear black either because it will “eat” your light.
4. Use “remote close up” if you have good camera. If you get too close you could have problems with deep sharpness (huh ... hope you understand it)
5. Be careful and center your object well .... some cameras have option to show square net on the screen, so this tool is very useful.
6. Try to have one edge of the soap paralel with your camera screen (when shooting). It makes you photo looks real and well centred. Plus if you have to crop it later in Photo Shop, it will be much easier.
7. Some soaps have tricky surface.... It means that you can‘t picture it properly even after many trials. Well... try to change the angle, and make few shots without any decoration to be sure that there is nothing to reflects light on it.
HP soaps with less water and ungeled CP soaps are extremly tricky and is very hard to achieve good close up of them and to make their details look sharp. I pictured CP soaps my friend made, and the gelled one were much easier to shot because it reflects the light equaly on whole surface...
8. Now... Photo shop.....
You can play with it endlessly , but in fact there are very few options you would like to use – autolevel, autocolour and autocontrast.... (Image-adjust-auto.....)
If your soap is not well centred you can rotate picture for 1-2 degrees and than crop the edges.
If you have decorative objects which have very strong and warm colour – as I have oranges - be prepared to change its colour topicaly , because it tend to look over-colored. Select frst the area of “boiling” colour, than you go on “Image-adjust-replace colour”, and you can just replace it with more apropriate tone of the sam colour.
Hope it helps
