Best way to get good quality product images?

[Zethnos]

I have a bunch of items I'm about to list on MP. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get decent images of the items. I have a high end PC and can pretty much do anything.

I'm not sure if I should have a background, no background, or what. I'm leaning towards doing no background, so I was thinking maybe do a giant white box and set the inside to glow slightly?
Are there maybe environment lighting settings or specific graphics settings I should use or set in order to get the best images?

Any advice would be great. I would get a photographer, but I have close to 100 items and would cost way too much to have someone else do it since most people seem to charge several hundred or even 1k+ for each picture.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Zethnos said:

I have a bunch of items I'm about to list on MP. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get decent images of the items. I have a high end PC and can pretty much do anything.

I'm not sure if I should have a background, no background, or what. I'm leaning towards doing no background, so I was thinking maybe do a giant white box and set the inside to glow slightly?
Are there maybe environment lighting settings or specific graphics settings I should use or set in order to get the best images?

Any advice would be great. I would get a photographer, but I have close to 100 items and would cost way too much to have someone else do it since most people seem to charge several hundred or even 1k+ for each picture.

Check the MP for a freebie called "Building Blocks" by @Chaser Zaks, it's a set of mesh objects, including INSIDE-OUT mesh boxes, with one or more faces missing, so for example a 5 sides inside-out box, which makes an ideal blank background.

Do NOT set it to glow, use full bright, and don't make it white, use a pale grey or some neutral colour, pastels, not primary, if the background is too bright or glows, it makes it harder to see the product.

Do NOT take the snapshots to inventory, you'll end up with 512x512 resolution images, save to disk instead, at say 2kx2k or 4kx4k, save as png files, load them into something like "Irfanview", a free image file format converter and resizer that has a 20 year plus track record of excellence.

You can so simple edits in irfanview, add text, paste a closeup or two into the corners, etc., and then save as a jpg, use the advanced options when saving, so you can change the quality/compression slider from the jpg default of 80/20 to say 95/5. This still gives decent image quality, and reduces file size so you can upload the 1kx1k (or whatever size you want that's within MP limits) versions of the images to the MP directly.

 

So you list your products, but don't make them active, edit each listing and upload the finished high quality picture from disk via the web browser, then activate.

 

[Chic Aeon]

I think the most important is the lighting AND consistency.   Simple works for me but others put a lot of information on their vendor pics and I guess that works too although I can't actually READ most of that tiny text when seen on the Marketplace. 

This is an unretouched photo taken AT a venue for a blog post. I think the simplicity grabs your attention better than lots of clutter, but that's just me.  I would take a look at what your competitors are doing and see which ads jump out at you from the big group listing. That is likely what you are looking for. 

This is NOT mine product  

Edited September 18 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Zethnos]

5 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Check the MP for a freebie called "Building Blocks" by @Chaser Zaks, it's a set of mesh objects, including INSIDE-OUT mesh boxes, with one or more faces missing, so for example a 5 sides inside-out box, which makes an ideal blank background.

Do NOT set it to glow, use full bright, and don't make it white, use a pale grey or some neutral colour, pastels, not primary, if the background is too bright or glows, it makes it harder to see the product.

Do NOT take the snapshots to inventory, you'll end up with 512x512 resolution images, save to disk instead, at say 2kx2k or 4kx4k, save as png files, load them into something like "Irfanview", a free image file format converter and resizer that has a 20 year plus track record of excellence.

You can so simple edits in irfanview, add text, paste a closeup or two into the corners, etc., and then save as a jpg, use the advanced options when saving, so you can change the quality/compression slider from the jpg default of 80/20 to say 95/5. This still gives decent image quality, and reduces file size so you can upload the 1kx1k (or whatever size you want that's within MP limits) versions of the images to the MP directly.

 

So you list your products, but don't make them active, edit each listing and upload the finished high quality picture from disk via the web browser, then activate.

 

Thank you for the reply! As far as editing software and stuff goes I'm all set. Sorry, I should have been more specific. I mostly just wanted to know about the in world setup for actually taking the image. I use photoshop and all as I'm a graphic designer. Though I will check out Irfanview just to see if it may be any easier/simpler to use for this many images.

The save to disk thing helps as I was just going to use a screenshotting tool because I forgot save to disk was a thing. I don't usually take pictures in SL at all.

Does the inside out box provide a better environment than just say a hollowed out prim box set to the pale grey you mentioned and full bright?

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I think the most important is the lighting AND consistency.   Simple works for me but others put a lot of information on their vendor pics and I guess that works too although I can't actually READ most of that tiny text when seen on the Marketplace. 

This is an unretouched photo taken AT a venue for a blog post. I think the simplicity grabs your attention better than lots of clutter, but that's just me.  I would take a look at what your competitors are doing and see which ads jump out at you from the big group listing. That is likely what you are looking for. 

This is NOT mine product  

Ahh thank you very much. It looks very nice. The items I have are very simple and wouldn't require the text. It would just be a picture of the item itself and the item being worn. Do you have any lighting tips?

[Chic Aeon]

22 minutes ago, Zethnos said:

Thank you for the reply! As far as editing software and stuff goes I'm all set. Sorry, I should have been more specific. I mostly just wanted to know about the in world setup for actually taking the image. I use photoshop and all as I'm a graphic designer. Though I will check out Irfanview just to see if it may be any easier/simpler to use for this many images.

The save to disk thing helps as I was just going to use a screenshotting tool because I forgot save to disk was a thing. I don't usually take pictures in SL at all.

Does the inside out box provide a better environment than just say a hollowed out prim box set to the pale grey you mentioned and full bright?

Ahh thank you very much. It looks very nice. The items I have are very simple and wouldn't require the text. It would just be a picture of the item itself and the item being worn. Do you have any lighting tips?

Lots to say about Windlight but now things are EEP.  I  can do pretty much what I want with EEP now but I  didn't make tutorials.  Hopefully you are using Firestorm which has many more options. If so, find a EEP you like adjust with the personal lighting settings until you are happy OR make your own EEP setting.  If you are using setups then if you leave your backdrop up and save your EEP setting you should be able to have things look fairly similar :D.

It takes practice LOL to figure out what the sliders all do.  

[Zalificent Corvinus]

39 minutes ago, Zethnos said:

Does the inside out box provide a better environment than just say a hollowed out prim box set to the pale grey you mentioned and full bright?

A hollow prim has neither floor nor ceiling, and the UV mapping  inside a hollow cube is awful, should you want to use a picture as a background.

The hollow mesh shapes I mentioned come in 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 sides, each side is  a separate face, that can be coloured or textured differently if you need to.

 

I have a 3-sided one set up for taking portraits, with a raised invisible floor, and a built in projector light, I don't rely just on EEP for lighting, I use a SUBTLE projector light, say strength 0.6 or 0.7 to give some definition, and add simple shadows. I turned on full bright (which eliminates the background shadowing it's self, and makes it flat and undifferentiated), and set the 3 main faces to rgb, highlighted invisible, so you can see the 3 "back ground" faces, the invisible floor to center the avatar in the middle, the pose stand (invisible in use) and the projector light top left.

And here's a pic I took in that setup, with the background set to black.

[Zethnos]

On 9/18/2023 at 7:03 PM, Chic Aeon said:

Lots to say about Windlight but now things are EEP.  I  can do pretty much what I want with EEP now but I  didn't make tutorials.  Hopefully you are using Firestorm which has many more options. If so, find a EEP you like adjust with the personal lighting settings until you are happy OR make your own EEP setting.  If you are using setups then if you leave your backdrop up and save your EEP setting you should be able to have things look fairly similar :D.

It takes practice LOL to figure out what the sliders all do.  

Yeah firestorm is the only way to go lol. I'll be sure to mess with that and see what I get, thank you very much!

On 9/18/2023 at 7:26 PM, Zalificent Corvinus said:

A hollow prim has neither floor nor ceiling, and the UV mapping  inside a hollow cube is awful, should you want to use a picture as a background.

The hollow mesh shapes I mentioned come in 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 sides, each side is  a separate face, that can be coloured or textured differently if you need to.

 

I have a 3-sided one set up for taking portraits, with a raised invisible floor, and a built in projector light, I don't rely just on EEP for lighting, I use a SUBTLE projector light, say strength 0.6 or 0.7 to give some definition, and add simple shadows. I turned on full bright (which eliminates the background shadowing it's self, and makes it flat and undifferentiated), and set the 3 main faces to rgb, highlighted invisible, so you can see the 3 "back ground" faces, the invisible floor to center the avatar in the middle, the pose stand (invisible in use) and the projector light top left.

And here's a pic I took in that setup, with the background set to black.

Ahhh makes a lot of sense I'll grab that and see if I can make/find a projector and mess with it a bit. Thank you very much!

[CherryChantal]

For my product photos I created a cube with one open side and the faces inside set to FULL BRIGHT, so there are no visible corners/borders and you get a plain background. For my fashion products I usually take photos of 2 different model poses - both with same background - and import them to my photo editor where i use overlay to combine them.