Digital Pictures of products

Not Sure if this where to post this..so here it goes

[shawn]

Greetings,

I am redesigning a site for a Chinese Green Tea Company - they want new photos of the new teas they have.

I am looking for suggestions on a background that is either neatural or will appear transparent so that I do not have to edit each photo and remove the background.

Is there such a thing. We are using a digital camera.

Shawn

[georgeek]

A plain white background with some side spot lamps at 45^o and your camera in macro mode should do it. How about arranging the tea into a Chinese character to make it look a little different. Sweep them into lines to form the character with a small artists brush. Experimentation is the key here, I once had to photograph some aqua color glass objects for a site and I tried everything from back lighting, light boxes and various arrangements of flood lighting. In the end I got the very best results by photographing them outdoors against a white background on an overcast day!

[waldemar]

a background that [...] will appear transparent

Place the products on and in front of something (furniture, fabric, foils) with a *unique* color, that does not appear on the product itself. This way you can apply some "blue-boxing" later when you edit the images to make their surrounding transparent. The texture of whatever you use as a background should absorb the light pretty much though, so you don't have colored reflections on the product...

[peewhy]

What about using a simple fade in your graphics tool?

[shawn]

Greetings,

Now, why didnt I see this forum when I was looking? :)

Using photoshop we can select the pics using something like the Elipitical Marquee tool then adding layer mask>> Filter >> Blur then adding a second layer with the color of the background of the site.

This turned out pretty good. I like the suggestion of forming chinese letters with te tea leaves too.

I must admit tea leaves are a different subject for me - I feel like I am smuggling marijuana - not that I have ever sone that :) They gave me about 20 differnt bags fo different teas - I never knew there was such a selection!

SHanw

[lorax]

You could also use a light green background since this is Green Tea - use color to make the suggestion.

[limbo]

As mentioned before, photographing them on a background that does not match the item colour (preferably bright blue or green)is the best way to achieve this - then using photoshop I would select the background colour using the magic wand tool rather than the eliptical one - if you apply a slight feather to the selection any darkened or jaggy edges will be reduced.

You can futher edit jaggies by selecting the eraser tool set to transparent with a small brush with soft edges to touch up bits the magic wand misses.

[shawn]

Thanks to everyone - we will try everyones suggestions.

[hariomhari]

You may try using a very very light shade of beige which will contrast well with any cold colors and any hot colors as well in ur future editions. I have tried this on desktops always with moderate to excellent resolutions. I believe the Chinese or Eastern culture and tradition relishes hot colors in most expositions. Good luck!