We have been asked by a few people how we photograph our beads, so I thought that I might add it here.
We prefer photographing in the sun, as if you look at the pics, this usually only creates 1 'hotspot' or white point on the bead where it is reflected. As most of our beads have many layers and use a lot of transparent glass, we finds this is the best way to show that off.
(Occasionally we use a glass that changes from either blue/purple tones in sunlight and incandescent light, and pinks under GFG's. These beads we do photograph also under CGF, usually just 1 shot of the bead in our hand.)
I work with the sun either to my back or back and side, so that the face of the bead gets sun - Usually from 1:30 to 3 PM.
Use a Sony Cybershot, with the macro turned on, no flash, largest possible image size. On this camera we use it's aperture mode with ISO set to either 80 or 100, F2.7, and the EV settings usually set on the negative side because of the bright sunlight. Do NOT use Zoom.
ALSO a tripod required, and this Sony camera has a little remote for taking the shot, so I don't have to worry about jostling the camera.
I do NOTHING in photo software but cropping, resizing and adding our logo. I never touch the color balance, white balance etc. If I feel I that needs to be done, I need to re-photograph the bead.
To get good color balance in digital bead pics, I shoot against a grey background (sheets of grey felt bought at Michaels) but in the larger frame there are large areas of solid black and white, also sheets of felt. This helps the camera adjust the colors properly. With all white or black filling the frame, the camera tries to compensate too much. See the photo below to see how grey, white and black are all in the photo frame the camera sees.
The original size of our photos is 3,456 x 2,592 pixels. I crop the photo, and usually crop to a square, cropping in tight to the bead.
When all the photos are cropped, I have a folder of photos all different sizes. I have a small program that can resize pictures, so then I resize all the pics to 1500 X 1500 pixels. Then I run them through Photoshop elements to add the logo (can be done with 1 command to do all files in a folder) I keep these 1500 X 1500 files on the computer, and these are the ones uploaded to ebay and etsy.
I also make a copy of the files, and run them through my resize program again to make copies that are 625 X 625 pixels. These are loaded to our website for storage, and are the ones used WITHIN the body of ebay listing, and for uploading to LE.
We name each bead, and have 5 pictures of each bead. So we end up with files like dorkybead01.jpg, dorkybead02.jpg, dorkybead03.jpg, dorkybead04.jpg, and dorkybead05.jpg. We settled on 5, as that is the maximum number of pics one can use on Etsy.
Here is the set up for a bead. Like I said, I use sheets of 8 1/2 X 11 felt for backdrops. On the base is is large sheet of styrofoam, and the back upright is just a cardboard box. All held together with straight pins. For the standing pictures of the beads, we use a needle, which can go through the felt and into the styrofoam. (Have found these free standing shots also allow the light to penetrate the bead to show off depth and layers)
Here is an original picture of the bead before cropping.
(resized to allow inclusion here on LE - original is 3,456 x 2,592)
You can see the bead is more or less centered on the grey felt, and when cropped, this is all that shows. The position is determined by the camera (on tripod), placing the needle and bead where the focus is the best for the camera.
In the back you can see the black felt on each side and just barely the pure white felt that is on each side of the bottom piece of grey.
This whole set up is sitting on top of an overturned rubbermaid garbage can, which is just the right height for me to sit in a lawn chair and take the pics. Last week was a big session, 485 pics for 91 beads. Sometimes you will see where I space out and forget to wipe down the bead and there are fingerprints on it!
Generally take two shots of bead freestanding, one for each side. Then lay the bead flat on the felt, taking one of each side with holes shooing. Generally have to raise the height of camera, and angle it down. Then a final shot of bead in hand aiming off to the side of the setup. This shot of bead in hand is a good way to show the size of the bead, and show how it looks against skin tones.
On a good day, with rhythm going, can do all 5 shots of each bead in about 1 - 2 minutes. Generally have to wipe down bead each time it is touched to get off prints, or learn how to gingerly move it without leaving any!
Hope this helps.
Software notes:
1 ) We photograph using the Sony Cybershot, which saves the files as JPGs
2 ) We use MAC computers.
3 ) Load from camera into iPhoto, and do the cropping/straightening in iPhoto.
4 ) Move the cropped files into a folder outside of iPhoto.
5 ) We use a freeware program iResize ( v 2.3.9 ) to resize all photos to 1500 square, with quality set to High ( 768 )
6 ) We use a freeware program Name Mangler (v 2.0) to easily rename our photographs, giving each bead a name.
7 ) We use Adobe Photoshop Elements ( v 8 ) to add watermarks/logos, using the 'Process multiple files' options that does a whole folder with one command.
8 ) We then use iResize again, to save off all the files in a NEW folder at 625 X 625 size. These are then uploaded to our web site, or to a picture server of your choice. We use a shareware program called CyberDuck to do this, as it again can upload a whole folder of files with one command.