Photo Question

[King Kahuka]

Hi guys, I'm new here but certainly not to the Lego community.

Anyway, I always see those absolutely flawless white backgrounds on Flickr and other places. I once saw a tutorial of one way to do it, but that's with photoshop and I can't get it (300 bucks is too rich for my blood). I know a good background can really improve the photo, but I'm kind of stuck on how to get them perfect. Although I have tried.

Here's the closest I got:

I know that background looks pretty good, but I really want to get that perfect white for my best mocs.'

Does anyone have any ideas or know how to do this?

Thanks!

[Plural]

I suggest you download something like paint.net as it's free and it'll allow you to do a lot of the things you can do on photoshop.

[ProducePrincess]

that is the kind of background i use and it looks perfectly fine .also cool truck.

[Erdbeereis]

First get a photo editing program. I use GIMP, which is a free program you can download. Take your pictures on a nice white background as you have done nicely here.

Then, once you boot up your program, turn up the photo's brightness and contrast a lot. I generally do about 80 on brightness and 40 to 45 on contrast.

This should give you a nice white background like this.

Hope this helps!

[King Kahuka]

Thanks guys!

I'm going to try the second method, that's a great idea. I'm downloading GIMP now.

[Cameron_Talley]

An easy way is to make yourself a simple light box. go to home depot and get some work lights (about 9.99 a piece) You want 250W lamps or more, the brighter the better. Then, take a big cardboard box and cut out the sides. Cover this with lighter weight white paper and shine your lights through it. Then take another sheet of white paper and place it in the box so that it forms a curve.

You want the setup to look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameron_talley/417065958/

and here is the result (Sorry, don't have a Lego example!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameron_talley/417066095/

You can play around with the angle of the lights, weight of the paper, etc to get some interesting results.

[King Kahuka]

Well, I might do that if I get some extra money soon, but I'm saving up for BrickCon. Maybe I'll make a light box later (it sounds like an easy and edit-free way), but for now adjusting the brightness works great.

I didn't even need GIMP, because I discovered iPhoto can adjust brightness and contrast easily, and it's even more easy because that's where all my photos are originally.

Here's a sample of what happened when I tried:

Much better. So I'm good for now.

Anyway, thanks for you help guys!

[Erdbeereis]

Glad to see you figured it out!

That picture is great!