Photographing Artwork with Gold and Metallics

[@KISMETWEDDINGS]

Nice work, but try putting the unpolarised shot on top and using a mask on that layer, rather than destructively erasing bits of the polarised layer to show the metallic through from below. And if you use 'Select colour' to find all the gold bits and automate the process, it's one hell of a lot quicker. It sometimes needs a bit of touching up (and with a mask you can) and you can feather the mask to blend the selection to suit.

[@jaceeyoshida5308]

Very helpful, thank you!!

[@shotinthecity8030]

This is a rally good video but do you by chance have images or video of you set up for capturing these images.

[@kenlor71]

Good technique, but, I'm working on ceramics (tea pots) with gold paint. The entire surface is glossy. I'm having a hard time dealing with the gold not being lit well (it's curved in two directions) without the rest of the surface not being washed out by diffusion material/soft boxes. Hope you will see this and get back to me.

[@BellevueFineArtRepro]

That's a difficult situation. One thing you can do is to take a shot where the tea pots look correct. Then, without moving the tea pots, or the camera, adjust your lights and or polarizer filter so that the gold looks good. You're going to probably have to take several shots, as you'll never get all the gold too look good at once. You'll end up with a series of shots where different parts of the gold look good. Stack those shots in PS and then erase away parts of each layer to expose the good gold. I can't think of an easier way. Focal stacking would be nice but it won't work here, so you'll have to stack them and then erase away on each layer to expose what you want. This is easiest if your best shot is on top, then you'll erase only the gold area on each shot that doesn't look good.

[@MikeTaylorPhotoArts]

@@BellevueFineArtRepro since I am using softboxes or at the least, a diffusion material, I don’t think that polarized light is an option. Thanks for your reply. I’ll keep working on it.

[@BellevueFineArtRepro]

@@MikeTaylorPhotoArts You can move your soft boxes around to tweek the lighting on the gold without polarization and edit in the same way.