James making a macro shot of a ring in a lightbox during our 1-on-1 photography lessonThis morning I headed over to the BB&T Building in downtown St. Petersburg to meet James in his office for an atypical 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson. He sells rings and other jewelry and wanted help making the best product shots he could using his Canon T3, lightbox and Canon 60mm macro lens. He also wanted workflow instruction on how to cleanly remove the ring from the background and place it on a pure white one.
We started off with shooting instruction and the best settings to use and also where to place the lights to give the best look on the ring itself. Since the lighting and subjects were constants, it did not take long to dial in the best settings. We took those sample shots we made and opened them in Photoshop where I showed James my Quick Select & Refine Edge technique for putting a subject on a clean white background. In order to produce the best looking edges, I had to use one extra setting I had not used before in the Refine Edge process, teaching myself something new on the fly as well as James! In the end we were both very pleased with the results we were able to produce. One other top tip for Photoshop, if you are having trouble selecting an image, do not crop the image at all, leave as much space between the frame and the object as possible, as this was how we were able to get a more accurate quick select. I told James many times that Photoshop is alive and has feelings and needs to be coerced sometimes into doing things!
James only had a very short and flimsy tripod to put his Canon T3 on so right during the lesson I helped him pick out a very nice Induro tripod and also a cable release! It was a fun and different lesson than my usual ones and I enjoyed learning about James' various businesses.
