Marilyn Brown

Great write up!

I would also add that you should try your best not to shoot it using a wide angle lens. Try a longer focal length and move back if you have to. Wide angles introduce distortion which can throw off the look and feel of the image.

Excellent thank you David.

thanks, they are good pointers

great, thanks for the tips!

If I change the resolution of the pic in PS, will that mean I can get a higher quality image so I could offer larger prints for sale, I only have a 5 MP camera and I don’t want to sell postcard size reproductions of my paintings.
cheers

Marie I only have a 5MP Camera also, so yes this will definitely help you produce larger prints. When you change the resolution in “Image Size” make sure you have Resample Image checked.

fantastic, you’re a hero, a great idea indeed to post this journal
thanks

I get best results in bright sunlight, before 9am. That way the sun is low, and you need to angle the canvas so that the sun strikes it at the most extreme sideways angle that still lights up the surface. The glare will then bounce harmlessly off to to the other side, and not straight into the lens where it will spoil your shot. Morning light is best for colouration- it’s too yellow in the afternoon.

That’s right degillett. When the light hits your work at 45 degrees you get the best results. This is how they set up the lighting indoors. Except they need to use special globes to prevent discolouration.

Thankyou so much for the info. I am useless with a camera and my paintings have suffered with dullness as a result (my groper painting is actually a very bright yellow, but in the cards comes out quite dull). I will certainly try your hints when I photograph my next painting. Thankyou again.

Using white cotton sheets a light diffusers is a good option in minimizing reflections from varnished surfaces.
If the camera is on a tripod one way of ensuring that film plane to picture plane is parallel is to tape some string to the centre of the lens cap and measure the distance to the 4 corners of the art work with it ..when all the distances are the all the same your appropriately “squared-up”.

Thanks lawrencew, these insights are great to share!

great thanks MB and other for this it helps a lot but I still have problems with shirts even after following the directions from RB I still cant upload as they wont save and come up with the RB message about using template and having a transparent background which I have done and now I am just about ready to give up on it

sorry, mine are all shiney from flash and yellow from indoor.
SOON, I will correct this!

It’s a little more advance but a tip I was so grateful for… if you crop your image and the image is slightly distorted (meaning the background is still showing in a corner or 2), do a ctrl t to activate a free transform and scroll over the corner you want to fix. If you hold down the ctrl button you will be able to adjust the image just enough to make the difference. Don’t go to overboard though.

This is great Trisha. The more people add the more informative this thread gets!

Thanks for the tips bubblers.

I have made photos or acryl paintings for a friend of mine, Eva

+ Use a tripod!
+ Avoid wide angle; Use a zoom to make the image “flat”
+ Make sure the painting is hanging on a wall etc. and isn’t tilted
+ I shoot indoors using a halogen lamp which gives much light (cheap buy at some hardware store)
+ Position the lamp sideways to give the image a slight 3D effect
+ Shoot with a DSLR and RAW if possible (ask a friend to do so ;-)
+ Correct the colors of your RAW image with the “Halogen” adjustments with ie. Adobe Camera Raw
+ Check the image pixelwise and remove white spots etc.
+ Crop

I wonder if anyone can help with this – when I photograph something on a white sheet of paper, whether indoors or outdoors, one end of the paper is always darker, and needs major fiddling to adjust. This happens even when the plane is correct to the camera, and sometimes even when using flash. Any clues anyone? Is it something in my camera? (10mgpix, not slr.)

thankyou thankyou so much helpful info

Thanks for the great information.
My major problem with my images is that they don’t have a high enough resolution for resale prints on redbubble. I really don’t know what I’m doing wrong. The camera I’m using is a point and shoot digital olympus FE208 8.0 megapixel.
Any advice on how I can get enough resolution for reprinting on redbubble would be much appreicated.

If you have a photo editing program on your computer use it to change the pixels per inch from 72 or 180 to 300.
I have photoshop CS2. In most programs you go into your image button and look for image size. It’s in here that you should be able to change the pixels per inch.
Once you’ve done this your photos should be way big enough to produce products.

Thanks so much Marilyn. I have Olympus master 2, and there is a feature in there to change the size of the photo pixel wise. I’ll try playing around with that and see if that works.

Hi, just to add to the thread because I’ve spent lots of time on this. I think getting a good quality photo of artwork is tricky and have tried all sorts of combinations and am still not happy. I think Paintings are visually complicated and photography isn’t as clever, (if you check accurately often areas of the color, tones etc are over emphasized. too much blue end, not enough green in the harmony etc).
I’d be really interested to hear what a top international level photographer would say on the subject.

Here are some things I’ve found helpful to consider, but probably best to try out a few options yourself.

DSLR (high mega pixels)
Photo package (lightroom / photoshop / capture one etc)
Tripod
Photo from a short distance and zoom in to fill the frame.
If you photo close the right angles warp, if too far image definition is lost.
Crop the image
Set the painting up squarely in front of the camera
Avoid reflections by angling the canvas or blocking the light source
No flash
Use the maximum pixels available (I find at least 9 or 10 mega pixels)
I find a long shutter speed in low light works well, (it picks up the color and texture but not reflections).
Adjust the color balance on the camera to a number of settings
Take a number of photos at different shutter, aperture, focus etc to see which you like most.
Use a software package afterwards with the painting in front of you to try to bring the image back to the paintings key qualities. If the key quality of the painting is composition, texture or color try to bring the photo back to that key quality through emphasis.
When saving the image check if your package uses srgb, rgb, etc. I’ve noticed once uploaded your image will change depending on the site. This can dramatically adjust the website image. I found the red color missing when using srgb on one site. A dramatic red turned to a middle value grey.

Try out the camera options to see which works best, you can usually get a good compromise.

hope this helps

If I change the resolution of the pic in PS, will that mean I can get a higher quality image so I could offer larger prints for sale,

No, not as stated. The image itself remains a given size of pixels unless you change that. The DPI (technically PPI, pixels per inch) setting is merely an indicator that if you print an image of given number of pixels at that many ppi, you’ll get an image of given size.

The number of PPI does indicate image quality; 300ppi is correct as a fair definition of “fine art” quality for conventional viewing distance (approximately A4 sheet at arm’s length) – so if you were to want a print 12×9” at 300dpi you would need an image 3600×2700px.

You can upscale (resize using resampling to a larger image) but it doesn’t gain you any further detail, of course. It can only work with what you give it. Different applications use different upscaling and sharpening algorithms to give the illusion of more detail but it’s not real detail.

Another trick to add to the pile: you can fix the perspective in Photoshop using the Crop tool and ticking the `perspective’ option. Then make sure the nodes line up with the corners of your painting within the photo and it will fix perspective for you.

Very useful, since my painting images tend to come out badly! Thanks for the tips.

Thanks ,very informative , will try out the hints, :o)) God Bless,Mae

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this subject, very helpful indeed. I’ve learned a lot.

I am having the same problem as Holy. I am not very dgitally literate. I have an Olympus 1040 that can take images upto 10MP. But when I down load the images they only doenload as 1 ro 2 MPs. I have tried microsoft, Olympus photoprogram and photoshop. How do I get my 10MP images from the camera to a program I can upload to red buble from and keep the 10MP quality?

10mp is big enough.
When you go into photoshop and open your pictures go into image size. Could you tell me what size in cm/inches your images are and what resolution they are?

Hi thank you for your help.

The camera is set for 10MP and the LCD screen on the camera tells me the image is 10M. When I transfer I set it for PC. From there I have 2 choices storage or MTP. I chose Storage. I don’t know what MTP is. It then uploads and I can chose ‘organize and edit’ on photo-shop or ‘copy pictures to a file’ using microsoft. the images transfer but are lower resolution.

In photo-shop the image size is 2.3MB 3648×2736.

I’m not sure about the size, they are thumb size but I thought the resolution was based on the pixels that remain the same number within the image (unless you crop). By enlarging the image, you are reducing the number of pixels in a given inch or CM square because you are stretching them over a bigger area. I don’t think that is the problem here?

How do I check if it is set to a small email size?

If your camera is telling you that it is at 10M then that should be good.
I don’t know what MTP is either. Is 2648×2736 the number of pixels?
2.3MB seems very small if thats the case.
As an example I have just taken a photo with my 5MP camera, when I opened it in photoshop the image size was 2592 pixels x 1944 pixels giving me 91.44cm x 68.58cm sized image at 72 pixels/inch the pixel dimensions being 14.4M

My first upload attempt was too small to produce anything besides a greeting card.

I changed the image size to 250 pixels/inch and checked the bow Resample Image – Bicubic
This produced an image which was 44.27cm x 68.79cm, 4357 pixels x 6771 pixels giving me 84.4M

Now all this stuff confuses the heck out of me but hopefully the information above will be of some help.

I guess you might have to go back to the Learning Center where somebody else may be able to help you with this.

Brillaint! thank you!

It is confusing isn’t it. Thank you for the detail I will have another look at photoshop.

All the best.