White on White

Loremonger

I've been doing a lot of catalog images lately, and white parts are a particular challenge. I take my pictures in a light tent with a white background. That's great for most things, but white parts on a white background make it difficult to mask out the background. So I figured I'd just take them against a black background, but that creates other problems. On half of the images, the details are washed out. On the usable images, when I crop out the background, the parts have a black halo affect.

How do you handle taking pictures of white parts and removing the background for the catalog?

Enoch

Teup

How about a gray background, or even an off-white background? I make black & white art and I have trouble photographing that all of the time. Black can cause the white to be over-exposed because the camera is digging into the black.
I think gray is the only option, all other colours will penetrate into the part through reflections etc..

Stragus

If the white appears saturated when taking a photo against a black background, just adjust your camera's settings to get the desired intensity: either the general luminosity, or ISO and exposition time.

Loremonger

If the white appears saturated when taking a photo against a black background, just adjust your camera's settings to get the desired intensity: either the general luminosity, or ISO and exposition time.

Thanks. That actually occurred to me right after I posted this. Any suggestions for eliminating the halo effect?

Teup

I'd say less physical light on the part (while adjusting the camera to maintain the same brightness for the part), or a background that has less contrast with the part..

Stragus

What image edition software do you use? What I would do in Gimp isn't exactly straight-forward. Something like : set selection from black background (as %, not just on/off per pixel), perhaps grow selection by 0.25 pixels, convert selection to alpha mask or grayscale multiplication layer, adjust lightness/contrast to saturate most white/black regions, "paint" around that alpha/grayscale image to fix any glitch, merge layers...

bovington

I've been doing a lot of catalog images lately, and white parts are a particular challenge. I take my pictures in a light tent with a white background. That's great for most things, but white parts on a white background make it difficult to mask out the background. So I figured I'd just take them against a black background, but that creates other problems. On half of the images, the details are washed out. On the usable images, when I crop out the background, the parts have a black halo affect.

How do you handle taking pictures of white parts and removing the background for the catalog?

Enoch

bovington

you could try and use a day light blue bulb in a table lamp that has an adjustable neck for your light box.leave your flash off. hope that helps

philippcos

I upload a picture of a parts a few days ago and it was not accepted. The part was the white battery holder for the train draw on autocad. To be able to see the part, I had put a very light gray as background, but NO... not accepted.
I was thinking now, of changing the color of the part to a light grey on a white background.

Hoddie

I upload a picture of a parts a few days ago and it was not accepted. The part was the white battery holder for the train draw on autocad. To be able to see the part, I had put a very light gray as background, but NO... not accepted.
I was thinking now, of changing the color of the part to a light grey on a white background.

Was it actually rejected or just not yet approved? Images don't have to be perfect for BO, anything is better than nothing usually. I'd be very surprised if the colour of the background had anything to do with any rejection.

DagsBricks

I had a white part on a black background be rejected. I got a BrickOwl notice saying as such.

Lawrence

@philipcos if I remember correctly, the issue was that the image wasn't uploaded against the correct colour of the item, the actual image itself was fine. Images need to be uploaded against a specific coloured part so the system knows which colour of the parts the picture applies to.

With regards to backgrounds, we do very much prefer a white background, we accept off-white, and would ask for a picture to be retaken if there was anything like black or red etc just because it stands terribly on a white website if you have a random picture with a black background.