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Shadows
Hi,
I am working on a project shooting jewelry. The jewelry is earrings and their kits. The earrings in one piece was fine. Shoot them quick easy edit. The earrings in individual pieces however are a pain. Some of them are see through, but my biggest issue are the shadows. I made a light table, using four flood lights and a flash. Still getting shadows like crazy do you guys have any ideas. Or is there an easy way to eliminate the shadows in photoshop outside of using levels as that is taking away the items.
Thanks
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4 Replies
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I’d suggest using the softest light possible. If by flood lights you mean regular work lights, you’ll need to diffuse them. Even hanging a sheet of paper in front (not too close – don’t want it to catch fire) to diffuse the light. Anything really that is white and semi-opaque – paper, fabric, ect. Also, when using your flash, if the ceiling is low enough (approx. 10 feet or less), bounce the flash off of the ceiling for diffusion or just use a diffuser on your flash. That should drastically reduce your shadows.
Just do some googling on light diffusion and you should find plenty of guides.
Worst case scenario you could cut the pieces out since I’m assuming you’re using a solid colored background. You can add some shadows yourself if you want to make it look less cut out.
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Hey there, I’ve done quite a bit of jewelry photography and shooting stuff like acrylic awards and glass. Do you have some sample photos? Also, can you post a pic of your setup?
Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293 -
Hi,
Here is my setup.
Hopefully I did that right. Either way I have taken pictures of the more solid items it is the clearer ones that are giving me troubles now.
Hope that helps.
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I would lose the light table and the under lighting. You can keep it, but I find jewelry looks better without it. Also, you are using diffuse light. To really catch the sparkle, you need to use direct lighting – consider getting some cheap honeycomb (10 or 20 degrees or so) for the direct lighting. Also, lose the cube. I’ve had one of those for years and I love it, but I don’t care for it with jewelry – it’s good for a certain look to jewelry, but you are having trouble with the setup and weird shadows – the shadows are most likely because the rest of your light is stronger than your under lighting – try one light at a time and see where the shadows and highlights go for each then combinations. If you can’t kill the shadows, try repositioning lights, lose one, then another, etc. Finally, try a more contrasted background – use a dark background (black, dark grey, blue, red, green). I have dozens of fabric bits I use for photos.
Can you send a couple test photos along? Try one with jewelry and one with something colorful like a Rubik’s cube or something similar.
Jonathan Ziegler
https://www.electrictiger.com/
520-360-8293
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