This article supplements the one I wrote earlier on shooting products at home. If you try shooting products on a white background, you’ll often encounter the problem of having the background not-so white afterall. Of course, you can turn up the power of your flash or lamp but you may end up overexposing your product. So how do you get the perfect white without introducing more light? Here’re the steps I use frequently for a location shoot when sometimes I don’t have the luxury of having all my studio equipment with me. The basic idea is to highlight the areas around the product and turn that to pure white using curves (you can also use level but I just prefer curves). By doing that, you won’t be affecting your product.

Step 1: You can see the white background has a gradient caused by uneven light setup.

Step 2: Use the Lasso tool and select the product. You don’t need to follow the product closely although you can if you want. Right click the mouse and set the radius to anything between 100 and 200. This depends on the resolution of your image. Just try and find out which works best for you. The radius gives a natural gradient to your selection.

Step 3: Right clock your mouse to pull out the menu and select the inverse because that’s the area you want to make completely white.

Step 4: Pull out the curves under Image>Adjustment>Curves menu.

Step 5: Below the graph, you’ll notice 3 eye-droppers. The right-most one makes whatever point in the image you select turn to white. Click that and position the eye-dropper to the darkest part of the white background. You’ll see that the whole background will change to pure white. Try looking out for the darkest area again if your background does not change to pure white. There is a more structured way of finding the white point using the Threshold command but this is the fastest. Just trust your eyes.

And that’s it, quick and dirty. Works for me.

2 Responses to “Shooting Products at Home: Getting the white background”

1. My Amazing Weight Loss Story says:

   29/05/2009 at 7:33 am

   Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed your most recent post. I think you should post more frequently, you evidently have talent for blogging!
2. eulee says:

   29/05/2009 at 8:09 am

   Thanks!