Dear All,
Hi, i will be appreciated if someone can share some techniques how to get pictures with backgrouds totally white or black. i tried different ways but it is not as white or as black as you can see in professional works here in this site.
I haven't done much of it but you can use a black background like a cloth. Use a dark background and select that and use curves or layers etc. to darken it (only allowed in advanced editing and not if you are totally removing a major element). Or when you use flash close up in a dark environment the foreground will be much brighter than the background. Hope this helps, there has been this same question asked in previous forums I think, so you could try a search as well.
Before I had the right equipment...or a brain...I taped notebook paper together to get a white background...didn't work so well...tape is very reflective!!
Professional photographers use something called a lightbox. The is a box with lights pointing inwards and rounded corners to minimise shadows. You can learn how to create one yourself here:
Very simple setup and technique (and falls under basic editing rules)-
- Use a black non-reflective cloth. Cotton is just fine.
- Keep it at distance from Subject so that texture is not visible
- Make sure you use shallow DOF (again- so that texture is not visible)
- Use spot-metering and make sure subject is better lit than cloth
- Underexposing might help in many cases but it can be worked out in levels/curves also
See these examples -
You can get pure white background also in similar way -
- Use a white non-reflective cloth. Cotton is just fine.
- Keep it at distance from Subject so that texture is not visible
- Make sure you use shallow DOF (again- so that texture is not visible)
- Use spot-metering and make sure cloth is better lit than subject
- Overexposing might help in many cases but it can be worked out in levels/curves also
In this example, no light was used on the black drop, all of it was on the model. Model was about 5 - 6 feet in front of backdrop.
With this one, a lights (2 of them) were used to 'blow out' the white background paper and then lights used on model. Model is the same distance from the backdrop.
Before I had the right equipment...or a brain...I taped notebook paper together to get a white background...didn't work so well...tape is very reflective!!
Not all tape, just non photographic, non black, non flatte matte.
