Finer art photo editing

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  • HijoDMaite

    I took some photographs of my friends oil on canvas paintings with my 7D and a 50mm 1.4 lens. I am trying to edit them in photoshop so he can print them large.

    I need to view some tutorials to make sure I'm not missing any important steps.

    The problem is when I search for info on the web I keep getting "art photography" or "turning your photo in to a painting" and shit like that. Anyone have any sources on this?

    thanks and Merry Christmas!

  • tank020

    Wel the first thing to do is while taking art photography that you look at the right balance between shutter speed, aperture and your iso value.
    I have that 1.4 lens, but I would avoid to stop it at 1.4, because thats never gonna give a sharp image. You need to light work good and than stop it at around 5.6 and have a shutter speed of 80 or 90 on a tripod and an iso of 100 - 200.
    The 1.4 stop just kicks in at poor lighting condition, but i would still avoid it, because its really creates to much DOF even when photographing artwork or products. After that, there is no real 1 tutorial. You just need to get al the balances right in lightroom, get the lens distortion out of there, because that 1.4 50mm still has a annoying distortion.

    • I'm pretty much doing everything you mentioned in the first part of your post but i didn't think about distortion thanks!HijoDMaite
    • Thanks!HijoDMaite
  • inhaler970

    Get a white balance card. Its not a white card, but a white balance card. Also learn how to white balance on your camera to get the most balanced results.

    Look up tutorials on lighting paintings or copy work.

    Like this one. http://www.betterphoto.com/artic…

    Good luck.

    • White balance card A.K.A grey card, is typically 30% grey.pango
    • < thisJulesvm
  • boobs0

    I actually used to photograph art for an art museum and a university, so I have some knowledge here.

    The most important thing is to light it completely evenly, and with no glare. The lights must be at quite an oblique angle, to avoid the glare. Next, you must position the camera exactly opposite the middle of the painting, and be sure you're shooting square squarely at the painting, so the painting comes out with all right angles. You must use a tripod for this part. These steps take time, especially if the painting is big.

    Next, you need to white balance it correctly, expose it correctly, and process it correctly in PhotoShop so the colors are accurate.

    I just looked at a couple of YouTube videos, and most of them were just plain wrong on several points. So avoid looking at those.

    If the work is small, it frequently works OK to just use a scanner. But this won't work for anything at all glossy, or with any impasto.

    If the work is at all critical, and it sounds like it is, it's probably best to just hire the photographer who does this work at the local museum. There are a lot of things to fuck up--like big glaring reflections on the picture, or having one corner really dark, or a hot spot in the center. And, of course, painters are really fussy about the end results.

  • boobs0

    Honestly, this is really tedious, time-consuming, and exacting work to do. Not fun at all.

    Make sure you're getting blow jobs or substantial payment out of it.

  • HijoDMaite0

    I think I was able to convey to my friend that this is a very time consuming and professional request that he made of me. He understands and says he is not expecting a museum type of job. So far he is happy. I also managed to confuse him further when I told him I was going to give him the full res PSD file and that he needed to further adjust colors and settings according to the type of paper and printer he is using. :-/ Honestly I think he just happy to have someone shoot it with a nice DSLR... He is going to trade me for one of his pieces as blow jobs are not an option for either of us.

    Here is one, he is happy with the color and exposure so far.


    Artist: Kristian Talley

  • vaxorcist0

    we used to use xrite/Greytag/MacBeth colorchecker charts, but I gathered from some research that the QP card is more neutral/accurate.

    http://thejohnha.blogspot.com/20…