A page of photos of products placed next to each other
Let’s take a look at a page of products placed next to each other. The products were cut out on the computer, the studio backgrounds removed and replaced with very light grey backgrounds. In this way, all funds are strictly identical.
An essential trimming on products.
When shooting, a near-perfect background makes it easy to trim. Replacement for a completely homogeneous background is essential in product photography series for e-commerce websites. Trimming allows the product to be perfectly exposed without worrying about the background. After all, it’s the product you want to sell. With products with perfectly identical backgrounds, the site becomes more aesthetically pleasing, the customer no longer perceives the photo studio and only the product counts.
Three photographs per side of products for the sites e-commerce.
For each product side, we usually prepare three images for our customers:
A first image with a transparent background, perfectly cropped, with slight transparencies around the image, in order to respect the depth of field on the subject: A transparent and progressive edge, which will avoid the feeling of clipping worked with an axe. This results in a more natural image.
This image can be used for your prints, magazines, flyers, photomontages… on all sophisticated graphic guidelines, or for sites that have sites with compressed background colors or CSS stylesheets with colored backgrounds.
A second image is delivered, with a 100% white background, for generalist sites, wholesaler sites, shopping malls and other marketplaces and search engines that require 100% background
White.
An image with a very light gray background, close to white, for your site and for more advanced websites with background colors.
Three images per product side, which cover all situations, for printing and the internet.
To go further in product photos:
With different objects, the perception of the studio background changes.
In a series of photographs, with different objects, the photo studio background will appear slightly lighter or darker, depending on the objects. Our perception of the background color is disturbed by the object in the foreground. How much it is even illuminated in a similar way. Our perception is disturbed. What solutions do we have to compensate for this small problem?
Two photos of very different objects on an identical background.
Let’s take two objects, the first one will be black and the second one will be white. T-shirts for example. The black t-shirt is very matte and absorbs all light. On the other hand, the white t-shirt is new, more “white than white”, still stuffed with optical brighteners. To achieve slight highlights and volume on the black t-shirt, the studio flash will be pushed slightly, while it will be reduced in power for the white t-shirt, so that it is not too bright.
The background will be lit in a similar way. The bottom will be very stable, in short, a perfectly identical bottom. And yet…
Product Photography, Contrast and Retinal Persistence
Our eye will linger more on the objects than on the background. Our eye will adapt to find details in both the black and white t-shirts. The pupil adapts slightly, our cerebral perception will also compensate, and the background will seem to be changed as soon as we look at the two images in a row in a slideshow. The background will appear lighter on the black t-shirt, and on the other hand darker on the white t-shirt. Obviously, the context of the slideshow poses a concern for retinal persistence to which is added an opposing contrast.
A slightly grey background to reduce blindness and retinal persistence in product photos
This very light grey has three advantages. It will be less glare, and will allow the white goods to stand out from the bottom. At the right time. It will also appeal to search engines whose watchword is to offer products on white backgrounds for obvious reasons. Indeed, if everyone brought their own touch of colorful backgrounds, the whole thing would look like Christmas trees. Finally, one last advantage and not the least: this background and this slight shade of grey, less blind, soothes the eye and reduces retinal persistence when switching from a black product to a white product. It’s tiny, but enough not to harm perception and not to strain the eyes of your customers who are very close to their smartphone.
