Product Photography Post Processing or It ain’t over ’till it’s over!
Getting great, market worthy product photography can be a challenge. Every product has its story and our goal is to capture it and present it to the potential buying audience. A product photography post processing workflow can make all the difference.
Recently, one of my clients came to me with a challenge: create a clean, simple and effective image of their beautiful watch, to be featured on their web page and in press releases. One of the challenging parts was that it contained sand in its bezel, which is the major concept on this piece.
Controlled Lighting to Start
Of course, the best way to start is with a carefully controlled set. Using a custom built variation on the lighting tents, we were able to control reflections with black and white cards around the watch. But, that only gets you part of the way there.
The shadow was okay but not great. The background is more grey than white. The watch stem was sticking out to stop the second hand where we wanted it. And, the sand looks flat and dull due to the flat lighting used to give us smooth, creamy highlights on the metal.
Product Photography Post Processing: Let the Layering Begin
After shooting several variations of the lighting on the watch, we brought it into Photoshop to start the product photography post production workflow.
We combined the different lighting layers and tweaked the levels in select areas to bring out the face and the sand, while smoothing highlights and hiding the bracing used to hold up the product in the shoot phase.
The Watch Composite
The final image was delivered to a happy client, where they added it into their own designs. It was used for everything from their catalog pages to blog posts.
- Tags: Boston, catalog photography, How To...
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