Color matching: Pre/Post tips

Saltydog · Jun 30, 2009

I've been tasked with improving our product catalog. Along with clothing, luggage and leather goods, we have a lot of jewelry in silver & gold. Some brass & bronze too. My main concern is trying to match the colors of the gold and silver which can have different polished finishes and slightly different hues and we have a lot of pieces. Are there any tips that may help in pre or post production to match the color of a lot of jewelry? I have some CS4 skills but I've not mastered it. I've been using Camera Raw which seems to offer the most control with ease of use. I couldn't find anything specific to this in my search.

I'm using a D90/D300 (depending on what's available @ the time), softbox, two TD5 Spiderlites (overkill but I use them for clothing too), AF-S Micro Nikkor 105mm 1:2.8G ED.

JerryPH · Jun 30, 2009

Get it right in camera. The better you do it in camera, the less you will spend in post.

I know a product photographer that shoots in basic JPG all day long... but that is because all he does are catalog shots (about 1000-1500 shots per day... day in day out) and has it down to an art. His lighting is perfect and never changes. His camera settings are perfect and never change either. He uses 1 lens (Nikkor 24-70 F/2.8) and thats it. That was his only piece of advice... lol

OMG, don't ask him to shoot a portrait, though... disaster! :thumbdown:

Saltydog · Jun 30, 2009

Thanks for the reply Jerry. So what your buddy is saying is to be consistent with your distance to subject, focal length, shutter speed, lighting setup etc. so you can just swap product, click, and repeat. Sounds like I'm on the right track. That's precisely what I've been working towards.

SpeedTrap · Jun 30, 2009

Make sure to get your white balance right as well, You will be able to set it with a grey card and then when you bring it into post you do not even need to touch it.

epatsellis · Jul 1, 2009

For any color critical work, I use a Kodak Q-13 near the edge of the frame, I have a reference chart that tells me what the rgb values should be and it's pretty simple to match the first one, then I use Aperture to apply the same w/b and color curve to each shot.