Perfect Product Photos - Photoshop Tutorial

Total Cost:  $2.24


Hello everyone!  This tutorial is a "two-parter"

Part 1:  How to use a light box to take photos
Part 2: How to use a FREE photoshop program to finish the photo
        **This program is open-source, completely free and free of any viruses (they do a have a couple of advertisements in the installation. Just don't sign up for them)

Part 1: Lightbox

Do you find yourself scrambling around your home in the early morning or late afternoon to take pictures of your products at that "perfect window" before the good lighting goes away?  If you are one of those people (I am guilty of this), then do yourself a favor and invest in a light box.  I spent barely $3 on mine.  Most of the materials needed are probably laying around your house somewhere anyway, so no excuses for crappy etsy listing photos!

I am not going to go into the nitty gritty details of how to make a lightbox.  There are plenty of good tutorials on the interwebs. (Just google "how to make a light box", easy)

The materials that went into my personal lightbox included:
Big box  ($0.99)
White tissue paper ($1.00)
White Poster board ($0.25)
Tape (free)
Scissors/box cutter (free)
Total:    $2.24

Fast Procedure:
1.  Cut 3 large squares out of your box (the sides)
2.  Cut the flaps off
3.  Cover squares with white tissue paper or fabric
4. Slide a long piece of poster board into the box.
DONE. (again, just search for another tutorial on the internet. I saw a neat one that had a cat in it.)

NOW, to take decent pictures for your shop... you will need:
Newly aquired lightbox
2 or 3 lightsources
Camera

Here is my set up... (I did this for the tutorial, so it's REAL [no photoshop, yet] I promise)

3 light sources, some are resting on the box,
others the bed frame. Get creative!

lights on!  Oh, my camera is resting on a turned over trashcan, again CREATIVITY!

One of my necklaces I sell on etsy.

Ordinary objects I used as examples for this tutorial.

OKAY!  Now that we have some pictures on our memory card, we can have some fun with Photoshop.. on to the next part!

Part 2:  Photoshop

I am not here to endorse any brand of photo editing software, so I decided to use an open-source photoshop that is available to everyone.. for FREE!  I will be using GimpSHOP in this tutorial.
Click here to go to GimpSHOP page for download

Definition for open source:

Web definitions:

of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available. wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Alright, I get it. It's free. But you do not necessarily NEED to have this program in particular. (Any will do)
This tutorial will also be VERY dumbed down. I don't know the technical terms for everything. I'm here to give you a basic concept of WHICH buttons to twiddle to make your pictures look good!

SO... You uploaded your pictures to your computer.. and you look at them, and they look... okay.

me and my boyfriend's rings, bought on etsy :]

GROSS, there's a orangey, brown haze.. I did this on purpose because color casts quite often show up depending on the types of bulbs you use (CFL's fluorescent etc.).

PROCEDURE:

Step 1:  Download, install and open GimpSHOP (It's a pretty big program, 200ish Mb, so you know) (and DO NOT agree to the dumb advertisements they put in the installation, just make sure you READ before you click)

box in the center is your workspace, drag pictures into here

Step 2:  Open the folder with your pictures and drag into center workspace.

fyi. once you get good at this you can select multiple pictures and drag all into workspace

Step 3:  Let file open.

Step 4:  The only window we are going to use is the Level adjustment. EASY!  So pull down the COLOR tab, and click on LEVELS..

Color > Levels

Step 5:  This will open the Level adjustment window.  

 Now, locate a SMALL WHITE TRIANGLE on the RIGHT side of the graph thing.  This triangle will become your best friend.

Step 6:  DRAG the White triangle to the left.  Drag until it reaches the beginning of the black graph (you can fiddle with this a bit later)

Step 7:  Now, locate a drop down menu called CHANNELS.  Note that you are in the Value Channel. 

notice the new location of the white triangle. (the black and grey triangle will also move)

Step 8:  Change the Channel to Red.  And repeat step 5.

Step 9:  Change to channel Green and repeat

Step 10: Change to Blue and repeat!

Step 11:  LOOK! You have an awesome picture now!

Once you play around with all the channels, you'll realize what they do..

Value:  Changes the overall brightness/contrast of the image

Red/Green: Don't do too much in this example

Blue:  Makes the whites whiter!

Step 12:  I went ahead and moved the white triangle under the BLUE CHANNEL further left, to make it even whiter.

moved to the left a little bit to remove orange cast from the ring itself

Step 13:  Time to save your new picture. (Do not press Ctrl + s)  Instead of "saving" in Gimp, you want to EXPORT your photo. (Saving, will result in saving it as a Gimp file)

Step 14:  So you want to go under file and press Export

File > Export (or ctrl + shift + e)

Step 15:  Click Export, then click Replace to replace the original file.

Step 16:  Click Export once more.

YAY, you're done!  Each picture below took me less than a minute to complete!  They are super easy to edit if you do it in bulk.

**I want to note that I also touched up some of the photos using the eraser tool.  I erased some shadows and dark spots in the background I didn't like.

So I will go over the final cost for all of this once more...

Lightbox materials:    $2.24

Photoshop:                  Free

Total:                            $2.24

Don't wait any longer!  Your dingy etsy listings will thank me!  Seriously, my dirty old sandal looks sooo good!  Just go do it!

Happy Crafting!

_Lisa Nguyen

Pin It Now!