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The-House-of-Mouse — How to make a Light box
Published: 2009-11-08 18:47:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 6284; Favourites: 113; Downloads: 0
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Description
Here is Part 1 of a tutorial I have written on how to use a Light box and photo editing software to make beautiful photographs.The tutorial comes in two parts:
Part 1. How to make a Light Box
Part 2. How to edit your photos to make them pop
I use both processes for my photos.
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Comments: 17
Your photo looks underexposed, you're losing a lot of detail from the subject (the plushie). If possible, you should be exposing the photo significantly longer to make it brighter rather than correcting it in an image editor. You're using a tripod and nothing is moving, so exposure time should not matter. If details are lost in the original photo, you can never regain it back regardless of how much post processing is done.
What should be done when photographing is to expose the subject correctly (usually let the camera spot meter) and ignore the background, then do whatever correction necessary in an image editor.
In this case, your subject is dark, so it's likely that your background would be blown out. Since that's exactly what you want, you won't even need to post process. If the subject was lighter however, you'd probably want to adjust with levels then.
Nice tutorial for making a light box though.
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Hi there, thank you for the tips. I did write another tutorial (linked in the details under this one, you can also find it in my gallery) on how to adjust an image in Photoshop to brighten it up. I deliberately underexposed this image to show what can be done with photo editing. Appreciate your advice for those who don't want to use photo editing though.
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Yeah, I have seen the other tutorial. In actuality, I was considering between posting the comment on this tutorial or the other tutorial about brightening, I decided to post here because this is where the actual photo was taken.
Personally, I think it's a bit strange as to why you would want to deliberately underexpose the image. (Maybe it would be better to explain how to set proper exposure?)
The thing is, exposing for the subject is pretty much always the proper procedure because underexposure means detail loss in the original picture. Same goes for overexposure, although overexposure is generally rare.
No amount of post processing can recover lost detail.
In this case, the dark areas like the lower part of the clothes of the plushie would have less detail than if you shot at a higher exposure. The brown part of the clothes and the violin might also have suffered somewhat.
Photoshop and other image editors are good for editing contrast and giving the final touches to the image, but it shouldn't be used to make up for any inadequacy during shooting.
The general objective during photography would be to capture as much detail as possible. Then photoshop is used to adjust contrast, sharpening, etc. to make the final image.
Since you already specified to use a tripod (or any other stable rest), it means that shutter speed is generally irrelevant. And that's a very good thing, because the shutter speed can be easily manipulated for proper exposure (generally using aperture priority).
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I really appreciate your comments and I hope that others who see this tutorial will read them.
I designed the tutorial for those (like myself) who sell online and particularly for those that struggle with taking high quality product photographs. They are often not photographers and are generally baffled by the intricacies of the menu on their camera (I know I was) and often end up with poorly shot photographs with flash lines and very dark images, so I tried to make the tutorial as simple as possible. Describing how to change exposure settings all different kinds of camera seemed too complex for my target audience, although I freely admit that a subsection on this would have been a good idea. Thank you again for your insight
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This is beyond awesome! I love how you used inexpensive materials to make this. Thank you!
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You're welcome! I'm glad you found it helpful
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This is awesome! I'm going to have to make one of these this weekend! Thanks for such an awesome tutorial!
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You're welcome! I hope you were successful?
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xD I haven't yet ;( I had the box ready and my cats destroyed it lol I really should have put the box up, they got hold of it and it smelled like cat after so I gotta go get a new box.
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Wow, this is a great tutorial, thanks for sharing
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Awesome tips. Really, if you check out the photos of my plushies in my gallery, you'll see how i've struggled. Going outdoors doesn't always help. I always have to take 15-20 pics and sift through to get the right one. Next time i post something, i'm going to follow this guide to picture taking. Thanks.
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You're welcome! I also found relying on daylight is not great, in this part of the world you are not guaranteed a nice day for photos! A light box works no matter what the weather! Good luck with your light box
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Wow, thanks very much 
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