I am in the middle of setting up a folksy shop and am trying to photo some crochet scarves I have made.
But no matter what I try the photos either come out too dark or the colours are washed out.
I have tried using a ring light, changing the white balance and the iso, but nothing seems to work.
Has anyone else had this problem or any ideas I could try.
Thank you
Nat
Hello Nat, I am not a photographer but natural light is best, I’ve just started to take my photos on a table by a bright window, if it’s too bright like mine (south facing) you’ll need to filter the light to stop it washing out your colours. I use some fine muslin cloth I just happened to have but an old piece of fine cotton, an old net curtain or similar will all do to diffuse the light a little bit.
A lot of people photograph outside in the garden and others use a light box.
For me it’s been trial and error, lots of it too, but I think I’m finally getting the hang.
I’m sure you’ll get lots of great advice soon though, from those here who are much better at it than I am.
Good luck.
Thank you for your reply.
I have tried out in the garden but that was on a really sunny day ( it was also about midday) and it seemed to wash the colours out.
Unfortunely the garden only seems to get a lot of light on a really sunny day ( the garden doesn’t get much light at all especially in the morning) and in the afternoon. Is is better to try on a more overcast day, or would better to try maybe late afternoon about 3-4 pm.
Thanks for all your help.
I often use a small ring light which is clipped on my phone and put white card on either side of the image which helps bounce the white light back onto the object. Also try using a photo app such as snapseed (free) to adjust the light, colour etc. It’s a little fiddly to use at first but well worth spending time learning how to use it. There are tons of tutorials on YouTube.
If you search my name and photos in the forum I’m sure I’ve given a link to photo tips before.
Sorry went and checked my settings and I don’t touch my iso or my f stop, I change my shutter speed (and use a tripod to avoid camera shake). I have my iso set at 800 and my F stop at f2.9 (shallow depth of field but I’m shooting jewellery so don’t need much depth of field). What camera are you using/ what settings have you got?
You’ve had some good advice here but sometimes it’s just not possible to get the results you need. So what I do is put my photos through photoshop. You can see the difference below with the same image.
So if you can invest in some kind of image editing software or get someone to do this for you, then it’s always a great tool to help you produce better photos. More and more we have to try to find ways of getting our photos as high quality as we can, because this is what really sells a product.
I’ve often thought of offering this as a service on Folksy but not sure if it fits into the rules. The other thing I do is create creative backgrounds for my work using Photoshop and layers. The below photo was featured in a magazine.
I take quite a few of my photos outside but find that taking them in full sunlight is bad news - I usually wait till its a bit cloudy but still bright or take them before the sun gets round to that bit of the garden which seems to work better. Inside I use daylight lamps and a white background which I then either brighten using snapseed or use background removal software. Still struggle with a lot of them but will keep trying to improve. BTW I just use my phone, I don’t have a camera and probably wouldn’t be able to work out how to use it properly if I did!
Thank you everyone for your replies they have been super helpful and all the photos that you have shared with me all look really good, wish I could get mine as good.
I was using my phone to take the photos but it is a old model by today’s standards, so I borrow my mums phone and took the below photos using a free standing ring light, then edited them with photo room.
This is the one scarf I made that I find the worst to photo as the colours are really dark so hard to get them to look right.
I’ve never used Photo Room but did you just lighten the images or use the levels facility? Levels will brighten the background and bring up contrast on the image, then you darken it slightly to add definition leaving the white background unaltered.
Purples are notoriously hard to photograph. So if your scarf has purple in it, then it will come out a reddish colour or blue. Something to do with digital sensors on cameras. You get round it by altering the image in Lightroom or something similar.
Another tip is to drape voile or similar over your lights. This cuts glare and mutes it and helps eliminate shadows. Works for me anyhow.
Thank you for your replies and your help.
Photo room is an app that lets you remove the background from your photo’s and add different backgrounds and then lighten/darken images etc…
Here is a link to it if you want to take a look https://app.photoroom.com/create
I lightened two of the images and darkened the one to try to get the colours to look better.
Here are the original images
I am not very good at using levels to get photos to look right, something I really need to learn.
Unfortunely the colours are black and shades of purple, and I am having trouble to get the colours to show properly.
Thankyou for you reply and you have me some things to try out and learn about.
Your photos would look better draped on a real model, ideally. Can you get someone to model them?
I used to sell scarves and after much experimentation ended up using this as a prop.
I use a Fositan light box which is fabulous for smaller items but it might be too small for scarves, it has proved a very useful investment for me. If a light box is no good for you I think using natural light that is filtered through material or bounced off card to soften the brightness might be the way forward and then combine it with photo editing to correct contrast, colour and sharpness etc. Fingers crossed this improves things.
Thank you everyone for all your help.
I have downloaded gimp to help with my photos.
But I will have to leave it for a while as I back and leg pain that has got worse over the last couple of days, but this will mean I can do some research and maybe look at getting some better lighting, especially as the days will start to get darker soon.
I’ve listed my services for photo enhancement on here.
