White background

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Lets get back to photography shall we !

Anybody else doing this ?
 
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Martinking said:
Lets get back to photography shall we !
I see lots of threads about getting a white background in studio shots, this is easy if you have 4 lights and a lot of space between subject and background.
But a much easier method these days is to just shoot on any old white sheet, select background in Lightroom and increase exposure until its white.
Anybody else doing this ?
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What happened to the guitar in IMG_6051.

IMG_6051.jpg
 
Martinking said:
Nothing happened to the guitar, what do you mean.
We are talking about white backgrounds not guitars.
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I think that you needed to manipulate the same shot with the guitar player, because these are 2 different pictures, and the guitar looks different in each.
 
Wow, how easy is that to do? (Though I don’t have lightroom).
 
Martinking said:
Anybody else doing this ?
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I do something similar for product photography fairly often (cut out the BG).

But you often need to be far more particular than just using an auto selection/mask. Auto selection often misses spots (e.g. BG next to the girl's neck, between guitar and leg), selects things it shouldn't (e.g. tuner knobs on the guitar). And in image 6064 it has left a shadow that is out of place in tone, graduation, and texture.
 
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I'm certainly no expert but personally I prefer lighting to photoshopping, it just doesn't look natural and a bit cut out with blurry edges.
In BD-290 for example you've lost all the detail in the lady's hair that falls in front of the background but it reappears over her clothing.

For (some) products shots it works but portraiture, not so much unless you're putting in way more time editing than you would setting up with proper lighting. Yes, I know its a workaround but not one I'd ever pay for or put on a wall at home. IMHO
 
In the pairs of pictures in the first post the subject skin tones look different between the pairs of pictures. It's much less noticeable in the group, but quite strong with the guitar player. I ended up cutting holes in a piece of paper to mask out the background so I could check
 
All approaches are valid, i.e. if it works for you then it works.

My quick and easy approach, if I want a white background, is to light the background immediately behind any difficult areas, such as hair, clothing without hard edges etc.
Enable blinkies on the camera and then set just enough overexposure on the lit bit of the background for the blinkies to highlight the lit areas just enough. It's then easy to turn the rest of the background white to match, without losing any edge detail.
 
In pre-digital days it was common to "create" a white background by making a mask.

This involved putting a piece of cardboard on the enlarger base, drawing a line around the subject to be kept, cutting that out and printing through the hole. It was, in fact, generally easier than that. If the subject to be retained had a relatively simple outline, you just used your hands to block the light where you wanted white.

Some people bought masks to achieve the same effects but I can't say I ever felt the need to spend money on it when scrap card and a pair of scissors did the job just as well.
 
Martinking said:
Nothing happened to the guitar, what do you mean.
We are talking about white backgrounds not guitars.
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I see you have now gone and replaced the images that you originally posted, that begs the question why?

Photography is a visual art, so if you are going to demonstrate a technique at the very least make sure it is done correctly.

I am talking about the unsightly mess on the soundboard underneath his right arm. It wasn’t there in the unedited version.
 
Martinking said:
One was edited the other wasn’t.
The reply matched your sarcasm I believe.
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No sarcasm from me, just wondering why you're being hostile to a valid observation. If your aim was to only lighten the bg to white why mess with the subjects colour balance?
 
RyanB said:
No sarcasm from me, just wondering why you're being hostile to a valid observation. If your aim was to only lighten the bg to white why mess with the subjects colour balance?
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No hostility from me.
You Don’t think cutting a hole in a piece of paper was sarcastic must be me.
 
Martinking said:
One was edited the other wasn’t.
The reply matched your sarcasm I believe.
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Martin, I've seen just two threads started by you. The first one was locked, and you were warned, because you made an unpleasant comment and wouldn't accept that we don't behave like that on TP.

And now you've done it again.

Let me be clear. Everyone on here is free to disagree with any opinion expressed by anyone else, but nobody is free to make personal or abusive comments about anyone else. Either you accept and embrace this code of conduct, in which case you are very welcome as a member, or you reject it, in which case your membership will end abruptly and without further warning; your choice. Either be nice or you'll be gone.

And, in an effort to help, if you have doubts about whether or not any other members know what they're talking about, just click on their name, and from there it's a simple process to see what they have posted elsewhere, and what they have done. Many people on TP (not me) are incredibly talented.
 
This is a method I've used to clean up advertising shots (especially black on white), but I'd never use it for portraits. Possibly for a low-res headshot for web use . . .
 
Martinking said:
yes this is good if you have space to separate the subjects from the background.
If there too close they just become backlit from the background lights, when I had a large studio this was easy.
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A large studio is needed if we're going to light the background properly and fully but hardly any space is needed if we're going to light just the area behind someone's head, for example.
Just a single light, at an acute angle, to light a small area. And, because the angle of reflectance must always be equal to the angle of incidence, the light doesn't bounce back and destroy any fine detail.
 
Martinking said:
No hostility from me.
You Don’t think cutting a hole in a piece of paper was sarcastic must be me.
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Cutting holes in a piece of paper was to let me compare face tones without being affected by the background. It's just a quick and practical way to mask an image - no sarcasm.
 
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