Tecnica facile per la generazione di immagini a fondo nero.

[Airon]

A friend of the forum asked me how to to black background photos of orders and other decorations.
For sure there are several ways to achieve the goal, i have seen very compicated set ups from photographers of numismatics with fake non refracting black backgrounds and angled glasses to remove light reflections from the studio lights. A DSLR, some diffusion umbrellas, lightstands, glass,... too many stuff for me to arrange every time.

Here it is the simple method i use, of course by no means the result is comparable to a professional level but it's not too bad... i think we can call it the lazy man's (or i don't wan to spend shitloads of money to have a photography studio man's) approach to order photography.

First of all the scan.
I use the scanner because the things we do need to scan are somewhat flat and it does the white balance for the colours to be correct itself without us to bother.
This spare us all the ugly stuff of postprocessing images for colours in Adobe CameraRAW or Adobe LightRoom and we don't need a colorchecker too. We do not even need to play with the photocamera to match the colour of our light (neon, incandescence,...). Easy peasy but most of all FAST!

Place the order on the glassplane, leave the lid open (if you want to can also turn the lights of the room off if it is a sunny day or you have direct light windows) and scan it!
If the glass is clean you have finished. Want the black a little more black? Open it in Photoshop, Image>Adjustment>Levels use the leftmost handle with values between 0 to 10. This transforms very dark grays in pure black.

scansione.jpg

OK.
Now i did some evil stuff just to show you a worst case scenario. If the scanner plate is clean and you aligned right the order you only have to play with some levels in Photoshop and you are good to go. But let's go with the worst case... move the order, angle it, put dust on the plate and touch it to make some nasty fingerprints.
Scan again.

1.jpg

Now we have a ugly scan, the order is not aligned with the suspension, the image is not straight and most of all the glass plate of the scanner is a mess... cleaning halos, dust, fingerprints. Ugly stuff... what can we do? Photoshop!

3.jpg

Of course this will not be easy to fix with levels only. Here we need to get rid of all the background since there's too much of stuff in there to correct manually or automatically without ruining the order too...
First of all straighten the image a little. Just to work in a more comfortable way. No need to be precise, do it at the end.
Here i have used the crop tool.

2.jpg

Now we need to isolate the order. There are really many tecniques to do so, the more precise way is to do it manually zooming in. Crazy amount of time. We are lazy.
Again our friend is levels: duplicate the layer and compress the range of colour with Image>Adjustment>Levels try something like left handler 0 conter haldler 2,7 right haldler 80.
You have to see the order nearly white.
Now use Quick Selection Tool and select all the white stuff. Since the contrast between the order and the background is great the tool usually works fine and makes a good selection. If not make some little retouches manually.
Below you can see the layer i'm working is very white after levels and the selection i have made with just some automatick quick selection is pretty tight and accurate.

4.jpg

OK. The selection is accurate but we don't want to be too much... we have chosen to go auto and usually there are some errors. But we are lazy and we don't want to check.
So... let's extend the selection to stay a little away from the borders of our order. Select>Modify>Expand here you can play... the value depends on the resolution of the scan. I have made this low resolution 300dpi and 5px are ok. The more the resolution the more the value of expansion.
Then we need to feather a bit so to make a transition from the very dark grays of the border of the image and the soon to be pure black background. Select>Modify>Feather and put here the half of the value of the exapnsion. I have put 2px feather with a 5px expansion.
Now Select Inverse and the selsct the layer below that you are working (that is the layer with the original order, not the white one you were using to make the selection). Then clic delete to delete the background.
At this point you don't need the white order layer used for selection, you can delete it or make it invisible.

5.jpg

Now we need to create the black Background and straighten up the medal.

To straighten up the order i used a guide to align the suspension and then i use puppet warp with 3 point to aling the order to the suspension.
I make a point on the top part of the suspension a pivot point on the ring ant the third point is to handle and align the order.

6.jpg

For the Background i make another empty layer that i put below the layer of the order and then i create a shape filled in pure black.

7.jpg

Crop it at the right size and you are good to go.
Save as JPEG if you plan to never open it again or save as PSD if you need to work on it again several times.
To post to the forum use JPEG. Always JPEG.

That's all.

[andrej]

Well explained, Airon!

I'll try that with my next purchases!

[Airon]

Well explained, Airon!

I'll try that with my next purchases!

Thanks! Don't forget to post the results

[rocketscientist]

Interesting and useful tutorial, Airon. I will definitely try it next time I am home.

I am sure it can be tailored for a white background as well!

[ruiz]

Very nice tutorial, I will try , thank you friend.

[SergioV]

Bel tutorial Airon, devo provarci