What's your photo retouching routine?

[spacefem]

So when I started on Etsy I figured I should just point, shoot, click and upload... bam, object photographed! But then I got other feedback, and it sounded like a LOT of people do retouching to lighten up backgrounds, bring out colors, etc. I'm just wondering what's normal.

I have a nice lightbox with bright full-spectrum bulbs, but a pretty cheap camera, so for my main photos I always open them in GIMP, bump up the brightness & contrast, sometimes add a white layer on "soft light" mode, sometimes select the background using the "similar colors" tool and replace it with WHITE white (this doesn't work well for light-colored items though, too hard to isolate the background!)

I'm constantly worried that my photos look either too processed or overexposed, or too dark like I didn't do enough with them... it's hard to find the balance.

But anyway, back to my original question, what's normal for you? Are you in the habit of post-processing every photo?

[heartsabustin]

Yes, I do. Even if all I do is hit the crop and contrast buttons, everything gets tweaked a bit.

Sometimes I have to fool with the white balance. Sometimes I have to brighten or darken a photo. All of them get a little contrast tweak. If it looks too overexposed, I'll Undo, and try a little less tweaking. Usually, just brightening and hitting the contrast will make the colors pop better, so I don't do much with the Color Balance.

I try not to worry about it too much - I've found a groove that works for me, and I stick with it.

[Former_Member]

I haven't done any...I know I should but I get totally lost.

On the other hand, I keep getting compliments on my photography - natural light [right next to the window], a white background, playing with the white balance on my point and shoot, and a tripod seem to work well enough for me for right now!

[Former_Member]

I post-process every photo. I use a lightbox & daylight-adjusted bulbs, too and have a Sony cybershot camera, on which I use the snowman icon for taking pics against a white background (a great tip I picked up on the forums). I take a few pics of each shot with different lightness settings, then import them to iPhoto, select the best ones, then use photoshop to adjust the colour, so that the white background it white, then I adjust the contrast, saturation and exposure as needs be. I find I have to do a lot more tweaking for uploading on to etsy than I do for pics I upload onto my won website. Etsy likes to bleach things out for some reason...why is that?

[Former_Member]

edit them in either picasa or fotofuze :)

[Former_Member]

Good question Daniel!

Spacefern: I think your pictures look good so I would keep on with what you are doing!

[HausofAriella]

I generally use Picassa to quickly edit the lighting and contrast, then use fotofuze to white out the background. If I need to do any work on the colors, I generally use Photoshop, but Picassa is much faster and easier for quick touch-ups.

[Former_Member]

I post process all of them but it's because I am an awful photographer and even processed, my pictures leave a lot to be desired. Without lightening them and even straightening them up sometimes (embarrassing that I can't take a straight picture, lol) my shop is a hot mess. I don't have the skills to even use gimp, so I just do picmonkey.com (I was using picnik) and auto correct

[WilliamsGiftshop]

I don't have a lightbox, but phothograph in natural daylight and spend a lot of time Photoshopping my photo's. Not to make them look overly touched-up, but to make my items look exactly like they are in real life, on bright white backgrounds.

[WilliamsGiftshop]

I don't know if Gimp has any of these functions: edit specific colour, brush, lasso tool.
They will come in handy for making your background white.

[Former_Member]

I process every photo in photoshop to rotate, crop and up the exposure. I then 'fill light' to get that blown out look that I like (here's an example as I don't have a product photo as my profile pic): http://www.etsy.com/listing/94060059/japanese-fabric-brooch-pin-in-mauve

I think well lightened photos really help to get treasury features!

For very pale products I raise the contrast, otherwise they just disappear against the light background, and for very dark products I lower the contrast or you can't really see the colour properly.

I also try and correct the colour if I think that it doesn't accurately portray the colour of the item (sometimes deep pinks can look red)

I think

[Former_Member]

I use iPhoto typically but I only edit when the colors aren't true to what I'm selling. I try to get the colors as close as possible to my item if I can. And I often crop my photos, I'm not photographer so my shots are pretty rough :)