Product Photography: The Easy Way

[@BrianRodgersJr]

Lightroom Quick Tip: Selecting a photo & pressing Command + E will directly open the image into Photoshop with no right clicking needed 😀Unless of course you want to open your image as a smart object which gives you the ability to open the image in Photoshop and retain all of the raw data in the image. I do this all the time. Nice tutorial, thanks for the shout out! 🍻

[@rinusborg]

Let preface it by saying I did product photography for more than 40 years in Calgary AB Canada. I basically had to invent and reinvent and modify my shooting over the years. Your method of shooting the bottle is a great NEW method that I never had the luxury of doing with film. I ended my career when digital started due to many aspiring photographers could often do what I did easier with most simple 6MP cameras. Retail outlets also went to desktop lay-outs and the rest is history. My objectives here are likely small minded old fashioned thinking but here we go. 1) Your method is time consuming and requires post. this digital manipulation is not in the wheelhouse of most photographers. Either they do photography or Photoshop and if they do both one is done better than the other. i do agree that with certain objects it pays to learn lighting and post processing. 2) Shooting a flyer with 60 items every week in just 1, maybe 1.5 days, requires simpler, faster methods. 2) Correcting perspective should be done in camera with a shift lens to avoid key-stoning. Fine with just one object but with multiple objects like a catalogue or flyer it adds too much time in post. (The lenses are expensive and I did it with Photoshop instead when shooting interiors. The 85mm shift is a great lens for product photography and if you need a longer lens put it on a cropped format Nikon DSLR) 3) Creating psd files for multiple layers is time consuming and requires computer equipment set up for that. Single shots are easily done on jpeg and often need no cropping when being used in desktop publishing. Most artists working in desktop publishing still want tiff or psd but that is a simple action in Photoshop to convert jpegs. They do not need to know. I sure enjoyed your video and "painting with light" is a great technique to learn. It means you can do things others cannot!. Rinus

[@3Torts]

og

[@SSHK237]

Simply Splendid Lee!! Two thumbs up with a glittering heart!!! 👍👍💖

[@TheUniverseEZvideo]

My respects!

[@gringito95]

great! thanks

[@valdemarcaballero5298]

absolutely GREAT VIDEO, GREAT INFORMATION!!!! Thanks for your work and thanks for sharing!!!!!! Blessings!!!!!

[@Skipsul]

I love the different approaches you take with this. It's interesting the wide variety of ways different pros use to make a product shot.

[@matriarch_marketing]

I liked when you used the dodge tool to even out the reflective text! I’ll have to try that. When I’m editing the text on products, I just use the color range select option and it automatically selects all the text without needing to manually mask or brush in a selection.

[@Inspired_JG]

Next level stuff. Very informative.

[@CaptainJack63]

📷Shooting products like this is the easy part. Getting the clients is rocket science. 🚀

[@g..3095]

looks so legit

[@burimsinani1]

bro you are a genius!

[@samstudio6338]

great work how we can download different background ?

[@lawrencekeeney4317]

Great video!

[@tombanks3245]

Excellent tutorial

[@johnvedsegaard6505]

Will it scale with screen?

[@StephenCaudillPhoto]

I did my first product job recently. The in-camera things you did here would have saved me a ton of time. Today I learned. Great video.

[@kallinescu]

niiiice !! keep them up !! love your work !

[@WassimShomali]

I was just about to shoot a product with an amber bottle / black label. Awesome coincidence, really enjoyed watching your modern approach & clean result!

[@suhaibmayanad]

am a 3d rendering artist it helps me a lot, thank you brother, amazing tutorial...

[@ScreenFiends]

Fantastic tutorial! How would you go about getting backgrounds. Use a stock site or royalty free images?

[@aungkhantmaung9236]

Which camera app do you use please?

[@AndrewCaldwell]

I think the unused grid sitting on the table stopped the highlights on the lower left of the bottle showing when you used the soft box. You can see the grid reflecting in the glass

[@StevenGrant_Photographer]

When you said it took 3 hrs, I was floored Why? because it only took you 3 hours. Does that count the black version day before. Flawless! I felt largely inadequate. Great job.

[@craigmclaughlin7073]

Nice work, as always, but curious why you opted to do the final editing on a separate flattened file that ended up having several layers. One would think you'd want to do all the retouching in the one file in case you needed to go back.

[@johndavidtackett]

One more idea!!! Community Product Photography Competition, pick a budget friendly universal product & have everyone submit their best product image for y’all to critique! 😉 Personally I think it’d be fun and a good learning opportunity as well.

[@ytucharliesierra]

Great work procedure you described and I also find the idea with the piece of glass very smart. How about shooting with a standard focal length (about 52mm), hence improving on the depth of field? After all, at roughly 100mm you are operating more towards the traditional focal length range of portrait photography, which is situated around 132mm. I always find the standard focal length in a zoom lens by keeping both eyes open whilst zooming the lens until I have a heads up display effect in the camera eye. This also makes for a rendition of the motive as close as possible to the perception of the human eye.

[@rinusborg]

There may be an issue with your line of reasoning. Viewfinders rarely show your subject the same from one camera to the next. I was able to do that with my Nikon F3 with the high point viewfinder but only at infinity. Focusing closer changes the angle of view in the camera. Maybe much more important is the perspective as it changes with your distance to the lens. for a product to look natural it should have minimal distortion. Point in case is a case of beer or pop. Photograph is from a few inches to maybe 3 feet and then 6 feet. Now consider your background. If you have that 3 feet behind the object, how large does it need to be at those three distances? Further, you are shooting a flier and have 50 small items. No post due to production deadlines. Would a camera farther away and zooming on each item not be simpler? Not to mention all settings as well as camera height and distance will remain the same.

[@michaelroach3553]

4:15 - WOW WOW WOW bro, rule #1 of product photography is that you're not supposed to check focus until after you've put everything away! XD I've definitely done that one before

[@MichalOlender]

That looked like tons of work but totally worth the end product!

[@ShafreelCosmos]

Wow this video just made me feel like all the product photography I’ve been doing for clients is complete garbage haha. I will always be a student in practice. Fantastic video thank you.

[@captureinsidethesound]

You save a lot of time by using iPhone's Lidar technology by scanning the product and then importing it into Procreate or similar like Nomad Sculpt. Use the app multiple lighting feature to get a rough draft of what you like and then go from there by adding this setup in the studio. You can even add other reflective objects in Nomad Sculpt to see if adding reflective objects in real-life will get you a better look. Again, its just a rough draft and the real things will look much better.

[@phynx2006]

Now that was hot 🥵 excellent tutorial 👍😎

[@agarcia2715]

Looks so easy 😂

[@TheMrKonov]

Awesome work ❤ Would be great if you make a video with AI backgrounds for the sauce

[@tomashudolin7197]

What is the name of that mobile app please?

[@alyssajane5845]

Im a photography student, i dont have any lighting yet. Is there any way you can do a video on natural lighting for product photography or diy lighting at all? Because im also extremely broke at the moment and cant afford any gear

[@philrichardson8974]

You can use a phone flashlight and longer exposure times and do the same editing style as in this video

[@Todd_Kuhns]

You lost me when you couldn't get the entire bottle in focus at f16. And your method may produce decent results but as a professional I would never take the time to do what you did when I could have done it in one or two shots.

[@beetrootize]

Yeah "just shoot everything and discover later while compositing" is not a sensible method. Not for a pro who can't waste time, not for a beginner who is trying to learn lighting. I'm sorry guys, not your best work imho.

[@FStoppers]

When you say one or two shots…do you mean with 4-8 lights doing very specific things? Because that’s what this shoot looks like with 1 or two shots only. -P

[@Todd_Kuhns]

@@FStoppers Yea, but you took dozens of images and took a ton of time to edit the final image. My point is that, as a professional, I don't have that kind of time to spend on each shot. Thanks for the reply.

[@kevinyounger7854]

Yeah, this was the "spray & pray" method to product photography

[@pavlo_phgr]

Cool video, I`ll try to do samothing like you

[@johnclay7644]

informative 16mins

[@johndavidtackett]

Love it Lee! Suggestion: Perhaps you & Patrick could do a product competition where one of you gets to take a bunch of photos then edit as much as they want, the other one gets to take ONE photo and edit as much as they want, track how much time each spent taking their photos & editing then put it to an anonymous vote and see what the audience scores the images without knowing the “rules” before voting. I’d be curious to see how much difference the end result is & if the audience actually likes one a lot more than the other. Also, love y’all’s tutorials, got a few of them going back to your original “How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer”, thanks for all you guys have done & continue to do for the community!

[@FStoppers]

Patrick here…if or when I take product photos, I would 100% do it this way. It’s so much faster than lighting a product correctly in camera and gives you unlimited options back in post. I wouldn’t want to take just 1 photo ever! -P

[@carlkristensen8398]

What a relief to hear you say you dont care if it get right in the camera or in post. Most will say the opposite. For me it is the end result that counts more than the process. Of course one should not get it "wrong" in camera, but something to work with in the direction of the goal.

[@adj19660806]

Good to see another way to do a product shot. Would be nice to see the edit process using ACDsee.

[@josephchan4198]

Sweet!! Next year might get out camera and practice.

[@powerlurker]

thats real pro level editing

[@victoryatallcost]

Wow Lee that was impressive as usual! You are a true master of your craft. Very inspiring!!

[@planetfun85]

"Easy way"

[@FelixCervantes]

Only one oversight. The reflection does not match the bottle highlights.

[@scottcunningham4115]

Looks great but didn’t you say you were going to do all editing using ACDSee? Yet you used PH?

[@colinhouck2208]

Lol it’d be hilarious to see someone try to do this on sn actual professional set

[@ed209inCA]

"You keep using that word... easy. I don't think it means what you think it means.'

[@drunksaru]

Call me old fashion but I can't see this being the "easy" way. But apparently more and more people to this because I see it more often in print and ads. I look at it and immediately know it's photoshopped. To of what extent, that I can't say but like in this video, the way things are lit and reflecting absolutely doesn't make any sense so it bothers the crap out of me and probably many from my generation and before. Also, this method might be an interesting challenge for a photoshop editor this is not the way you teach a "photographer" how to take product photos. It is probably the most time consuming hardest way of doing things. Sorry man, this video just screams "I've never done proper product photography before".

[@michaelchiusano3744]

I did product photography for 30 years in both film and digital domains and this technique is impractical. If you know how to light objects, this shot would take perhaps an hour on set, with minimal retouching. His "lighting" is so incorrect he is forced into undoing the errors in Photoshop. Add to that is the importing of perhaps 50 or more high resolution files off the camera and you will be trying to handle hundreds of gigabytes of data and good luck with that.

[@Mr_Chuckles]

@@michaelchiusano3744 yeah imagine using his method to shoot a catalog of images....completely unrealistic

[@wissamabudia3037]

R u sure this is an easy way ?

[@DanTuber]

90% photoshop, 10% photography

[@adamkatz2003]

Why are you using the pen tool in 2022?

[@samueljames5167]

KZbin isn't giving me notifications when you post new videos....

[@FStoppers]

Did you hit the bell? I’m curious about this since we have so many subs but our views have been hit hard the last few years. -P

[@samueljames5167]

@@FStoppers yes. I have the bell on. I realized I haven't seen content from fstoppers in a while. I had to look the channel up, just to see there was a recent upload, and many others I didn't see.

[@joewagnerphoto]

Out of stock.

[@jmkariuki5863]

Whatever happened to critique the community?

[@danwongphoto]

this does not seem like an easier way to do things

[@nunoli]

why you not all in camera..., you like to be in the front of the computer

[@kmt488]

This guy doesn't even use adjustment layers in Photoshop. LMAO.

[@EricSnydereasphotography]

Do this without Profoto. Because its not a "very minimal amount of money for that gear"

[@FStoppers]

You could do it with a flash light -P

[@EricSnydereasphotography]

@@FStoppers Yes absolutely you can with a flashlight.. When you say "You can do this with minimal amount of gear" And you are using Profoto B1 and Profoto trigger and a $2k camera? You will not get the same lighting results that you have here. Thats all I'm saying, Great work as always!

[@jamperez]

not the easy way

[@ShamanBhat]

Trying to rap or something?

[@fidodido664]

f16? why? The pictures you took and the lighting were not good. At least you know photoshop...

[@JWMCMLXXX]

Sweet. I have the requisite Photoshop skills. Now to tackle the high-end equipment issue. heh