How To Enhance Product Photos Using Color Mode: a tutorial for both GIMP and Photoshop

Ever take a photo, load it up into the computer, and then realize that the colors are off? You like the photo, but you're not sure how to get the colors right?

Have you ever noticed how catalogs seem to show all of their different color options using THE EXACT SAME PHOTO?

Or maybe seen a newborn photograph that appears to be completely in black & white - except for some cute accessory, like a tutu or hairbow - and then wondered how they did that?


It's actually pretty easy to get these effects using something called 'Color Mode' if you're willing to work on your photos in GIMP or Photoshop. (BTW, GIMP is a freeware software package that is VERY similar to Adobe Photoshop. If you are a business on a budget, I recommend using GIMP rather than shell out tons of cash for Photoshop.)

I'm going to show you how to use color mode to enhance product photos. You can use the technique to remove color from everything but your product, to get colorized images for marketing purposes, or to create color previews for your own custom catalog.

How to Make an Amazing Item Look Awful. (And How To Fix It.)

When you first start to sell online, you can be confident that you have a great product. In fact, you KNOW people love it because they fawn over it at shows.

But then, it doesn't sell online. 

Why? 

It could be your photos. Trust, me, it's possible to make an amazing item look awful. 

To show you what I mean, I'm going to use an amazing piece that I got from Anna of Crafts of the Past. It's made using an antique jade archer ring that's been turned into a necklace. For jade, it's got an amazing range and pattern of colors and a cool piece of history to boot. Anna has a lot of really neat pieces incorporating antique elements. They all look lovely in person.

However, even this amazing piece can look awful under the wrong photography conditions.

Here I've intentionally photographed it doing all the wrong things:

Using the Clone Tool to Remove Distractions Using Either GIMP or Photoshop

OK, let's face it, sometimes when you pull a photo up at full size on your computer screen, you notice that little distracting something that shouldn't be there. For example, it could be....

How to Crop and Re-size Images in GIMP and Photoshop

Most modern cameras are capable of taking very, very large photos. However, these large photos are not good for the web. They take a long time for you to upload and a long time for users to download. Sometimes, they are so big that the entire image wouldn't even fit fully on the screen at full size.

There is no reason to have an excessively large image up on the internet. Optimize them for the web by cropping and re-sizing.

How to Crop

In Gimp, the crop tool looks like a utility knife.

In Photoshop, the crop tool looks
like two L-shaped pieces.

Cropping refers to cutting off a portion the image in order to get the shape (and perhaps size) that you want. In Gimp, the crop tool looks like a little utility knife; in Adobe Photoshop, it looks like two L-bars. (Photographers sometimes take two L-shaped pieces of matte board to play with framing options on a print.)

Product Photography: Adding A White Background in GIMP

In my last post on Improving Your Product Photography, I talked about an easy method for using bulletin board paper to set up a white background. For my second installment, I'm going to talk about how to use an image editor to improve on an existing photo and to replace an existing background with white (or any other color or image - this method is versatile).

Software
There are lots of different image editors available. I personally work with Adobe Photoshop CS 5. However, there is a program called GIMP that can do almost everything that Photoshop can, and it's available for free via gimp.org, so I'm going to use it for this tutorial. (By the way, the biggest difference that I've found between the two programs is that Photoshop allows for macros and batch processing, which most Photoshop users don't even know how to use.)

I like these two programs because they allow you a lot of flexibility for fixing things. Sometimes with other programs, if you go too far, you can't undo a certain change. I'm going to show you a method that'll let you make changes later if you need to without starting all over again. Also, the program's flexibility means that you don't really need to complete the steps in the exact order that I give. I'm just going to list them in the order that I generally do them.

Original Source Photo

I'm going to start off using this photo. This dress form is nice for display, but the black and white pattern on the form can sometimes make it a bit tricky to separate it from the background. For the purposes of the tutorial, I've moved the dress form to an area where there are lots of background distractions. Usually, I photograph it against a plain white wall.

Bag originally embroidered by special request for a client.
The tote features my own exclusive embroidery design.

I'm using a bag on the form because the straps create open areas where you can see the background between them.