Challenging effect task....

**stapan94** · 05 March 2009, 11:24 PM

Hello All,

I am new to product photography and don't know how pro's pull it off. I took a pic of the new case i got from the internet.

The black vertical picture is what they had posted on the internet and the one lying horizontal is what i took.

How can I achieve similar effect. I am using Adobe Photoshop CS

Please help.

Thanks

**Soquili** · 05 March 2009, 11:55 PM

Hello Stepan,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

The picture standing was taken in a studio with 'studio lighting'.

Photoshop cannot duplicate that type of change in your photo.

Product presentation requires a lot of professional knowledge. Knowing how to setup multiple lights with different brightnesses and sometimes different colours to make the product look it's best. Photoshop is typically used to remove small imperfections or remove a background from a high quality photograph.

Photoshop cannot or at least not easily replicate a studio photograph.

**HayTay** · 06 March 2009, 01:53 AM

Is the first one truly a photograph? Or, is the case a render done using a 3D modeling or CAD program? It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two.

Just a thought,
HayTay

**stapan94** · 06 March 2009, 02:44 AM

True. I've tried few things in photoshop like using the hue/saturation filter to do tungstun/yellow adjustment and use curves and levels. however, still can't get it to look even close to the one on left. well, i think; as Soquili said it could be more of studio lighting effect. The one i took was through a home made tent lightinig

**steve.ledger** · 06 March 2009, 03:21 AM

I'm no photoshopper so I apologise for going slightly off-topic here but I'd like to at least show what can be done with Xara Xtreme.

In answer to Harry about the vertical example being a 3D model render, well yes it could be, but as I have shown, even in Xara Xtreme I can draw a fairly decent copy of it (took me about 20 minutes)

As for stapan94's question of making the horizontal example look more like the vertical one, Xtreme has enough tools to make this task fairly satisfying too.

**stapan94** · 06 March 2009, 03:32 AM

true... it does seems to have modified the image drastically... will check xara out

**RTW1** · 06 March 2009, 08:21 AM

Photoshop is more than capable of faking studio lighting.
The links below although not perfect for your job will at least show you some of the possibilities.

http://www.tutorial9.net/photoshop/m...for-photoshop/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/531965...ight_tutoriar/
http://photoshopquicktips.libsyn.com...post_id=165445
http://www.webdesign.org/web/photosh...oom.14157.html
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/Lig...thLayersSM.mov

**Albacore** · 06 March 2009, 08:27 AM

I agree with RTW as well as the lighting you can also easily change the perspective of your view from CS3 onwards. If you have this version and above please have a look at the Help Files,

**gnurf** · 06 March 2009, 08:43 AM

The rule is "garbage in garbage out" but with minimal effort you can set up a "home studio" by using a couple of lights and white cardboard. When you take the photo you should aim to get angles, lights and shadow as correct as possible - then you don't have to spend ages in Photoshop.

The attached example is a quick and dirty version of your photo made in Photoshop