Photographers face many challenges when capturing professional images of highly-reflective products like jewelry, sunglasses, glass, and metals. Photographing objects like these can be tricky even for the most experienced photographers. In fact, reducing unsightly glare and reflection is one of the most annoying issues we face.
When it comes to displaying products for sale on Amazon and other online marketplaces, it’s critical that we provide our clients with an accurate portrayal of their products without distracting reflection or unflattering glare. That’s why Thrive Product Studio would like to provide you with the following ways we minimize these problems in our studio.
Reducing Glare In The Studio
Essentially, glare is the result of a source of light hitting a reflective surface. This can be seen on anything from a pair of sunglasses to reflections on jewelry. Glare is also commonly caused by windows, something you’ve undoubtedly dealt with if you’ve ever tried taking a photograph through one.
Regardless of why it occurs though, unintentional glare can ruin even the best images. Fortunately though, there a few things we can do to work around, reduce, and even eliminate glare to make the products we photograph a little less glaring.
Lighting
The primary challenge to reducing glare is to make sure reflective or shiny surfaces don’t absorb light. To address this, we make sure to remove other objects from the studio and fill the space around the object with as much light as possible. There are three primary ways to achieve this:
- Make sure your studio has white walls. Colored walls or wallpaper can be reflected and appear in a product photograph.
- Utilize a continuous light source. Continuous lighting is favorable for two reasons. It allows you to see your adjustments and their impact on reflections.
- Use a diffuser. A diffuser spreads a single light source across a surface. This effectively fills the space around a product with more light while softening it in the process and reducing harsh shadows.
Angle
Normally, the use of a tent helps to reduce the glare of a reflective product. However, you may not always want the overall soft lighting that comes along with it. That’s where angle comes in. By moving a light source higher and to one side, you can change the angle of reflection so that the camera is further away from the angle of reflection.
The trick here is changing the angle of reflection so that the camera isn’t in line with the angle of reflection. This is especially true when you are photographing glasses. A good tip is to use your phone and turn the screen on. Move it around in all directions until you don’t see the phones reflection in the glasses. When you find it, that is where you would set up the angle for minimizing the light.
Background
Most Amazon product photography is done on a plain white background. If you are using a different background color, however, you can reduce glare by making sure the item is further away from the background. This will reduce the reflection of light that could tint the object.
If you do use a plain white background and are photographing a product straight on, then you can blow the background out by using another light source pointed at the area behind the object. A flash is especially helpful for this as it will deliver a high burst of light.
Tripod
A tripod makes it easy to capture crisp, detailed product images without a flash. In Amazon product photography, a flash can alter colors and cast hard shadows. With the use of a tripod, you can use longer exposure times instead of a flash. You can also set the shutter delay so that your camera takes a picture a few seconds after you touch the screen. This will provide you with sharp, in-focus images without unwanted glare.
Post-Processing
Post image processing is relatively straightforward. At Thrive Product Studio, we use healing and cloning tools to eliminate reflections, smudges, dust, fingerprints, and other types of imperfections to make your product look its best. This provides us with the opportunity to ensure consistent, quality results for our customers every time. However, retouching takes time to learn and master. As a huge part of the Amazon product photography process, having your images professionally retouched is vital to achieving a polished, high-quality look.
Thrive Product Studio
Elegant, high-quality images of your products is important. At Thrive Product Studio, we love the challenge of photographing highly reflective objects. To us, there is no better satisfaction than creating a perfect image for our clients. Not only will we provide you with images that capture the attention of your online buyers but save you the time and hassle of trying to create high-resolution images on your own.
If you would like more information about the Amazon product photography services we offer, contact us at 1-877-681-0980. We would be more than happy to discuss your project and answer any questions you may have.
