How to Photograph Artwork, Part 3: How to Post Process Your Photos Using Adobe Lightroom.
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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2024
- How to photograph your artwork at home to a professional standard using a 2 light set-up. A video in 3 parts. Update below
Part 3:
How to post process your photos using Adobe Lightroom.
How to convert raw files into polished images with accurate colour and tone.
How to format your photos for websites and Instagram using Photoshop.
Parts 1 and 2:
Part 1: • How to Photograph Artw...
Part 2: • How to Photograph Artw...
UPDATE
It is possible to use Photoshop with Camera Raw instead of Lightroom for processing. For me, Lightroom is much more streamlined, intuitive and faster for basic processing - I much prefer it. But Photoshop is better for retouching and making more dramatic and artistic changes.
In the video I recommend exporting to Photoshop before exporting to jpeg for the web. First of all, you can do this much more quickly than I do in the video using the shortcut Command-E, which will open the image in Photoshop directly without needing to save a file. However if you don't need to retouch your image, you can resize and convert to jpeg/tiff etc directly from Lightroom.
I don't talk about colour space as much as I should in the video. I highly recommend learning about it, if you haven't already, and I've put a link to a good tutorial by StyleMyPic below (check out his other videos too, they're re really good). Lightroom natively uses a 16 bit ProPhoto colour space. If you do need to export to PSD or tiff for further editing, keep it in ProPhoto (rather than Adobe RGB as I say in the video) right up until the time you need create a copy for the web. In which case then you should convert it to an sRGB jpeg, or Adobe RGB tiff if you're sending it to a print lab.
Links:
Lightroom Tutorial: photographylif...
Colour Space Tutorial: • Color Spaces CLARIFIED...
CATEGORICALLY the best how to on this topic i've ever found! Thank you!
Ah, thanks Richard. Appreciate that! 😊🙏👍
I have to say, I don't recall ever before watching a series of three instructional videos where I found every second directly relevant and valuable. You are VERY good at this. Thank you for creating the exact content I needed, it felt like I had commissioned it myself. Well done and many thanks!
Thank you!! ☺
Thank you so much! The best tutorial on photographing your art wok on UA-cam! Cheers!
Thanks Maria! 🙏😊
I have a 40 year graphic design and photography career behind me and in (semi) retirement produce watercolour prints through my Etsy shop. This and your other videos are spot on and I'm enjoying learning from them. Off topic, but the thing I'm most enthused about is binding my own watercolour sketchbook from your videos. Takes me back to art college in the 70s when we did just that! One of my regrets is that I no longer have that original book. Really clear concise videos Will. Excellent stuff!
Thank you!! ☺
Hi Will,
I never write comments on youtube or elsewhere, but in this occasion I thought I would do just to say thank you. I am an oil painter in need of building a proper catalog, and in the process of buying the required equipment to photograph my work. I am completely overwhelmed by the wide choice of options and budgets. I understood the principles of polarisation, lighting etc, but I really needed someone to give me some sort of advise on specific materials to use. I found the three videos in this series very useful, with specific honest advise on materials, and very well structured. Cheers!
Ah, thank you Guillermo, I really appreciate that! 😊🙏
Omg, this was incredible. Very informative and easy to follow! thank you
Thanks Aneta! 🙏☺️
Great series of videos and thank you!
Thanks Trent! Appreciate that.
Nice tutorial Will, thanks for making this video - its well presented for a beginner to pro.
Ah, thank you! 😊🙏👍
Fantastic! Exactly what I was looking for. Your three videos were much better than the three DVDs that I purchased covering the same subject. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge!
Thank you!! ☺
These three videos are incredibly helpful! Thank you so much! I have been struggling for weeks with glare and photographing my paintings in general.
Thank you! ☺
Well explained. Thanks.
😀🙏
Very nice series - answered a lot of questions about photographing artwork. Thanks much.
Thank you! ☺
Thankyou! Very well done
Thank you!! ☺
Agreed, brilliant and much less intimidating now!!
Thanks Sarah! 😊🙏
Great series. Incredibly helpful, thank you
Thanks! 🙏😊
Thank you, that was so helpful :)
😊🙏👍
You're the best. Thanks so much
Thanks! I’m working on a follow-up to the series at the moment - stay tuned for that! 😊
@@WillJBailey Awesome!
Thank you Will, very detail and well explained videos to photograph artwork. I would love to know more about how do you print the work and making sure that the colour is correct. I only know to set the psd file to CMYK, but in reality different printer has different colour output, is quite frustrating to print the colour accurately. Would love to know that, and thank you again for your detail explanation! It really helps a lot!
Hey, sorry for the slow reply, I had a break from UA-cam. I use a print shop to print my work. The key to accurate colour is: to use colour accurate lights; shoot in RAW; use a colour calibration card if possible; edit on a regularly calibrated, ideally wide gamut monitor; and to make sure the formatting of your image file is correct. I send my files to my print shop in Adobe RGB (not CMYK - modern high-end inkjet printers use RGB) as a 16 bit TIFF at 300DPI. Do a small test print and adjust accordingly. I will do a video on this soon
thank you!! 🙌👏
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If you have got a colour calibration card, you can use the white patch to adjust the exposure (under the histogram it should say ca. 90% when you go over the patch) and the black patch to adjust the black point (ca. 5%). Easy. Remember that the patches go in steps of 20% from white to black. So the second (not the third) patch is actually 20% grey, even if it might look brighter (a well know optical illusion of neighbouring shades).
Hey. The calibration card isn't so much for exposure, but to get the colours of the photograph accurate to the physical artwork.
Loved your videos!! Very helpful, really appreciate it 🤩
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Colour space?
Would you edit a colour photo on a monochrome screen? I would not, but that doesn't seem to me very different from editing in Adobe RGB when I can't see it on my screen because it only supports sRGB.
I suspect that, as you say, LrC and Ps work in 16 bits. I further suspect that ProRes is a subset of that, and sRGB and Adobe RGB are eight bit and therefore subsets.
Thank you for these useful videos ! I wish you had done them three years ago. I had to figure it all out on my own!
I tried polarization filter a couple years ago on my oil paintings and didnt see any difference on the glare 🤷♀️
I have a question : if I use the spyder checker, it’s already correcting the colours , why do you correct the colours after that?
For exposure and blacks, I correct them on my photo with the spyder checker, on the white and black square, and transfer these corrections across.
I am really looking forward to your video about photo for prints. I had a lot of bad experience when I am working of my photo and make all the good adjustments. The printer prints it and it’s very very dull. I haven’t found a good printer yet.
Hi Clemence. Did you use a linear polarising filter (rather than a circular one) on the lens, combined with sheets of linear polarising filter over the lights? I find that using the Spyder Checker saves time by getting the colours broadly correct before fine-tuning them manually, but you can do without it and just adjust everything manually for sure - or just use it, as you say, for exposure. Yes, how to print artworks will be my next video, coming soon!
@Will J Bailey Yes, it was a circular one. It was advised by a photographer at the time, to whom I asked for advice. It didn't do anything. Then, the filter got stuck on my camera and I had to buy a contraption to remove it... Sometimes I Photoshop the glare out if I really need to. Mat varnish also helped. I take a photo before varnish and after varnish. But I need to try linear some days. But I would need giant sheets for my lights as they are quite big.
For the Spyder Checker, I do the white balance, correct the exposure, correct the black on the photo of the checker in front of my painting. Then, go to "Photo" in the top menu, then "Edit in", then "Edit in Spyder Checker", which opens Spyder Checker automatically, align everything, save the preset. Go to Lightroom, quit, and reopen, and apply the preset to the photos. Then, I don't change the rest of it. But I realised today that Lightroom was on Camera Neutral at the beginning and after adding the presets, it was changing it to Adobe Standard, which I didn't notice before watching your video.
@@clemenceprosen You can use a linear or circular filter on the lens - linear ones are just more effective, they get rid of all glare as opposed to most. They have to be combined with sheets of linear polarising filter over the lights to work though. You turn the lens on the filter to increase or decrease the effect. My sheets are about A3 size. It’s 100% worth the effort if you paint in reflective media, the effect is amazing.
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Thank you for these videos. I have been working on this process off an on for a few years. Past results were promising but lately I'm not happy with the quality. Sharpness and proper exposure seem to be problems.
I follow most of your guidelines already, but had not considered the aperture 'sweet spot' or using digital zoom in manual focus mode. Also I have not tried the camera neutral setting in Lightroom.
Until this moment I was convinced my lighting was insufficient, especially for larger artworks. I use two 500w SV hot lights, and Canon T3i with EF50mm f/1.8 lens. I was about to go out and buy some strobes for more power but now I'm not so sure. Do you have an opinion on the suitability of my current light source?
Hi Jason
I’m not sure what an SV light is, but I’ll assume it’s like the 500w tungsten lights I used to own, that I briefly show in the first video.
In once sense, yes, they should be plenty powerful enough. If you’re using a tripod and a timer, power is not so important because you can just slow your shutter speed to get correct exposure.
The issue is more to do with getting even light distribution. Theoretically because of light falloff, if the light is centred in the middle of the piece, the ends of the painting are slightly further away and will receive fractionally less light.
However, although I haven’t shot any really big pieces, only up to 80x50cm, I haven’t found this to be an issue up to this size. It’s important to get the lights as far back as you can, as light falloff is less prominent the further away the light source is from the subject. However for really big pieces it could theoretically be an issue.
In which case you could use 2 lights on each side, though this might cause light distribution problems of its own. Alternatively you could use rectangular soft boxes to increase the size of the light source, though they are expensive, and you’d have to buy new lights, because yours will be too hot - really you need strobes for that. The third option is just to correct it in post - this is the cheapest, but the least ideal.
But changing you lighting will only really help with making your piece more evenly lit (though that is one of the big challenges with copy photography). Exposure shouldn’t be a problem if you follow my steps in the video. Assuming you focus correctly, use your lens at its aperture sweet spot and correct for chromatic aberration, if you want to improve your sharpness, the solution is to change your camera and/or lens, as you are using budget equipment.
Your camera is 18mp - upgrading to 24mp+ would see an improvement. Upgrading from the nifty fifty up to a mid-range lens like the 60mm macro, or higher, would see an improvement. Check out Christopher Frost or Dustin Abbott on UA-cam for good technical lens reviews. Upgrading from APSC to a full frame camera like the RP or higher would see an improvement. Unfortunately in photography image quality does come at a cost!
@@WillJBailey This is really helpful. It's great to have direct feedback from someone who is working through the process. Will definitely consider upgrading camera and lens as well as lighting. Many thanks again for the thorough guidance!
By the way, SV was an abbreviation for Smith-Victor, which is pretty much the type of light you guessed.
@@cloudhands No worries! Hopefully I don't sound like I'm pushing you to spend! You can get decent results with the gear you have, but you will always hit a wall with budget equipment, which you can't get past without investing. It just depends on your needs / expectations. If / when you do upgrade,, start with the camera, then the lens, then the lights.
This was very helpful. Did you calibrate your screen? I have mine set on Adobe rgb1998- it is a m1 laptop with retina sreen, not sure if it is good color or not. I am much more used to Camera Raw, then Photoshop... and have never really bothered with Lightroom. Do you think it really makes a difference to use it or is it really the same as camera raw>? Thanks!
Hey, sorry for the slow reply, I had a break from UA-cam. Yes I regularly calibrate my screen, it's really important for accurate colour when printing. Apple screens are wide-gamut, but they use use Dislay P3 rather than Adobe RGB. Display P3 is not quite as good for printing, it's more designed for video, but it's still very good and better than the sRGB of most monitors. Lightroom Classic is amazing - I definitely recommend it over Camera RAW. I do use Photoshop too, but mostly just for retouching and resizing 👍😊
Hey Will - very informative and helpful. One thing I was looking for is I need to upload my artwork at 300 dot. Can you reply and tell me where that option would be on Lightroom.
Thanks
Thanks James! You can change the DPI when you export an image (right click - export - export), in the Image Sizing section. Of course this is only relevant when exporting for print - outside of that, only the total pixel size matters.
Hey Will, thanks for the useful tips!
I have a question regarding flashes and big oil paintings. What modifiers would you recommend? For my portrait work I own a soft beauty dish and a rectangular softbox, and they seem to work fine with my 2x Godox AD200's, but I feel I should get two same sized modifiers. What size would be best do you think?
Now that I think about this, should I even use modifiers when photographing artwork?
Hi Ljubo. I don't think you need modifiers for photographing artwork unless the work is sculptural in a way that produces shadows. Modifiers control / soften shadow, so if your work is flat you don't really need them. Theoretically a couple of identical rectangular softboxes might help to light very large pieces more evenly - ie so that the top and middle of the image are identically exposed, but in practice I haven’t found it necessary, as long as the lights are far enough away (though my work isn’t that big). For oil painting though, I’d recommend using cross polarisation (as per Part 1) to remove glare, and that works much better with bare lights. For art photography I mostly use my softboxes for photographing framed work and other 3d objects. I get this question a lot, so I’m going to do a follow-up video soon which will address it and other things I missed or have learned since, so stay tuned for that. Also check out the notes in the description in Part One.
@@WillJBailey Hey thanks so much for the quick response. Totally makes sense to leave the modifiers out if the flash heads remain at a good distance. I've had 2 sessions now with oil paintings and depending on the surface and the used colors I have to use polarisation as you explained. Will try to leave the modifiers at home for next time.
Would you use a grid on long, rectangular modifiers if you had to photograph framed work?
@@LjuboLukic When I say 'framed work' what I mean is product shots, as opposed to flat reproduction. For example framed prints on a wall, shot to give customers an idea of what the prints look like as a physical object and/or in an envrironment. For that, soft light is better as it removes the hard shadows - particularly if you’re including other objects like furniture. The light doesn’t need to be perfectly even, as in repro. I have two softboxes that I use, for this and also for portraits, product photography and video, one large, one small, both deep parabolic. A lot of the time though I lay the work flat and bounce the light off the ceiling, it works really well. If you look at my Insta you’ll see what I mean 🙂
I am considering the Canon 6D Mark II (with my L 24-105) for photographing my paintings - do you think it would be good enough for prints?
Hi Shane. Whether it will be 'good enough' is really subjective, so impossible for me to say. It depends on the type and size of your work, how you'll print it, and generally your standards and expectations. From a technical perspective zoom lenses aren't as good as prime lenses for copy work, and full frame has an advantage over APSC, but you still may be happy with the results. Personally I would go for an EOS R over the 6D Mark II, since they're around the same price (in fact I did - I own an EOS R) and would go for primes over zooms (again, I did - 45mm and 90mm Macro Tamrons), but that's just me! My needs / budget / expectations etc may be different to yours...
Great video, thank you, but, surprisingly, there is no instruction to export for print.
Hi Thanks. Yes that will be a future video 👍