Tuesday, October 11, 2011

How to make a professional looking photo of shoes with your basic stuff

Long title, I know! Don't worry. The way I edit photos is not as complicated because I don't have Photoshop on my good-old laptop, just Windows Photo Gallery and Paint!

"What good can possibly come out of Windows Photo Gallery and Paint?" you may ask. Well, not much actually...unless you know how to take good photos to begin with. I found that the best way to take good photos of shoes is to set up a light box or in my case, two white poster boards at a 90 degree angle (since that is all I had to work with in the house) beneath a window that gets good natural light. Like this...


Don't I look adorable in white?! Well, there is a reason to my madness. The light will reflect better off of white clothes than dark clothes. Whether it ends up working well or not, I want to try to get as much natural light on my shoes as possible!

Once I take the picture from where I'm sitting, it looks like this...


It's still rather dark, but with some adjustments, it will look fabulous!

Next, I bring it into Windows Photo Gallery. There is a button in the top bar that says "Fix". I click that and it brings me to a very basic editing window.

 
The options are on the right. I typically start with adjusting the Brightness and Contrast.


The next thing I do is adjust the color. The picture looks too blue to me, so I change the Color Temperature and Tint.


Last thing I do is crop the picture, if it needs it. In this case, it needs just a little bit of trimming.


Et Voila! The picture looks much better!
 
Now, for those of you who are over-zealous, you can bring the picture into Paint. Add a circle, fill it with a color and set some type of your choice over it and it could look like this...

There you have it, my friends! That's how I make a professional looking photo of shoes with very, VERY basic stuff. You can see my "Exotic" Hand Painted Peacock Shoe listing in my Etsy shop here...

www.LoveMirandaMarie.etsy.com

Good luck making professional looking photos!

Love, Miranda Marie

2 comments: