a little white background tutorial

i was asked by a shy dgrinner to explain how i get the white backgrounds in some of my shots. well, the first step, of course, is well, have a white background :lol3 in my case, it's some large pieces of foamboard, and also some large white poster board. but this technique will work with any white background, really.

of course, there are ways to nail it with lighting at the time of shoot - but many folks don't have either the skill or the equipment to do this - so here's a way to get it done, "in post."


okay - for these balls of clay, i used a snooted 420ex flash unit (full power) off to camera left, and a 580ex onboard the camera (very low power), with a softbox attached. still, the clay balls are exposed properly, but the bg is really grey.

• open the file in photoshop
• choose select>color range
• use the eyedropper and drag it along the full range of the grey background color
• click enter
• now, the background is selected
• choose select>feather and try 2 pixels

• do ctrl-j to put this selection in a new lary
• now do ctrl-l and do a levels adjustment
• drag the rightmost slider to the left until you've got white white

now, do your normal post routing .. adjust colors, any cropping, cloning, etc.



simple, eh? :shay

enjoy (a white white background) photography,