Problem with still photos with dirty background colors.

I'm not sure where to post this so please excuse if I'm in the wrong forum.  I have a Cannon EOS Rebel T3 EOS1100D.  I have a problem taking pictures to use on Ebay.  Other photos aren't a problem.  I am a beginner.  The problem is getting a still closeup without getting a dark background or too light a background.  I have a light yellow kitchen where I take the photos.  The kitchen is not bright.  I have tried using a tripod, an external movie lamp, flash, no flash, lights on lights off.  The photos always have a brown, grey, or dirty yellow background.  Right now I am trying to take photos of a silver medal enclosed in clear plastic and the photos are terrible.  I have tried different settings and I still take terrible photos.  I have tried changing the WB, ISO, f stops.  I have also tried using different papers as backgrounds, white to black and all colors in between.  I would like to take a photo of the medal with a white background and not a dirty background.  Can anyone suggest what can be done?  I also use Photoshop CC and even that doesn't help.

pooka3 wrote:

I'm not sure where to post this so please excuse if I'm in the wrong forum. I have a Cannon EOS Rebel T3 EOS1100D. I have a problem taking pictures to use on Ebay. Other photos aren't a problem. I am a beginner. The problem is getting a still closeup without getting a dark background or too light a background. I have a light yellow kitchen where I take the photos. The kitchen is not bright. I have tried using a tripod, an external movie lamp, flash, no flash, lights on lights off. The photos always have a brown, grey, or dirty yellow background. Right now I am trying to take photos of a silver medal enclosed in clear plastic and the photos are terrible. I have tried different settings and I still take terrible photos. I have tried changing the WB, ISO, f stops. I have also tried using different papers as backgrounds, white to black and all colors in between. I would like to take a photo of the medal with a white background and not a dirty background. Can anyone suggest what can be done? I also use Photoshop CC and even that doesn't help.

Without seeing the photos, I can only assume it might be the kitchen light making the background off-white.  DSLRs aren't great at White balancing indoor lighting so have you tried shooting Raw and adjusting the WB in raw editing software like Canon's Digital Photo Professional or Adobe Lightroom?  Jpegs are not so good for correcting white balance.

Is the object itself the way you want it? If that's the case and only the background is off, you're either using mixed lighting or the painted room you're shooting in is influencing your pictures. You could consider using a photo tent, it's all white and you put a couple of lights on it which should even out the light and white balance. You can do a custom white balance and keep shooting in jpeg, or use raw and set the white balance manually.

Moving to a room with neutral light would also help, or using flash to overpower the ambient lighting, bouncing off pure white surfaces or use the tent or other white shoot through material.

You said that photoshop cc doesn't help, though I suspect you try to do adjustments over the whole picture instead if selectively? Photoshop has powerful selection tools to select the background and make changes using layer effects. You could do some background replacement on the shots you already have or reshoot in better conditions.

pooka3 wrote:

I'm not sure where to post this so please excuse if I'm in the wrong forum. I have a Cannon EOS Rebel T3 EOS1100D. I have a problem taking pictures to use on Ebay. Other photos aren't a problem. I am a beginner. The problem is getting a still closeup without getting a dark background or too light a background. I have a light yellow kitchen where I take the photos. The kitchen is not bright. I have tried using a tripod, an external movie lamp, flash, no flash, lights on lights off. The photos always have a brown, grey, or dirty yellow background. Right now I am trying to take photos of a silver medal enclosed in clear plastic and the photos are terrible. I have tried different settings and I still take terrible photos. I have tried changing the WB, ISO, f stops. I have also tried using different papers as backgrounds, white to black and all colors in between. I would like to take a photo of the medal with a white background and not a dirty background. Can anyone suggest what can be done? I also use Photoshop CC and even that doesn't help.

I see this is your 1st post here.  Welcome to the forum.

You've been given some excellent help.

As others have stated, it would be of help to post examples to what your problems are.

Lots of friendly, helpful people here.

Good luck,

Mike

That's excellent advice. A photo tent with inexpensive lights, and custom white balance, is what I use for photos of small objects with white backgrounds.

With a photo, clarity. You're shooting a highly reflective object and you are getting into the image. I think those are your fingers in the the reflection. The second image looks OK for color, but the reflections of your fingers and the specular highlight of your light are hurting the image.

Reflective objects are really hard to shoot well. Here's a link to a nice writeup of the problem that explains step-by-step lighting experiments and the final result:

https://photoflex.com/pls/creating-double-diffusion-for-reflective-objects

pooka3 wrote:

example of the problem. b4 and after ps first one is b4 and the next is after. not much difference. I think I used a black paper then white paper and photos were still terrible.

It looks like your White Balance was able to be corrected without issue.  The problem I see is that your background is too close.  Are you able to stand up the plaque, and put the background sheet further away from the plaque?  That way the background will be out of focus and less distracting.

To avoid seeing the reflection of your hand and the camera you could perhaps try turning off the room light and illuminating the plaque from the front with a desk lamp or spot light.  As long as you're in the dark, you shouldn't reflect off the glass.

Mostly, you just need a piece of black construction paper with a hole cut it it. Poke your lens through that and the reflective surface won't see your fingers or your camera.