Ancients: photo backgrounds

Every so often I get the desire to work on shooting coins on white rather than black as is my usual form. The silver on white below did not have enough light on the background to be white without postprocessing to erase the unevenness. The bronze and both blacks were shot black. I still like the black better. The question is whether I should keep working on it or just stay black. Comments?

 

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Your images make white and black both look good, but I still prefer the black.

 

I was thinking about this recently and I think I am starting to like the white background better. It blends in with the background of most of the places I see the image (paper/spreadsheet/thread) and really makes the coin itself pop.

Make sure to keep us posted with the images whichever you decide

 

Did not vote. I like all options.

 

That is such a tough question.

I like black better for viewing on a screen.

If you are going to print on white paper, then white is better for practical reasons.

I think it helps to be able to get a good image either way.

 

Overall, I prefer black backgrounds. If I had the skills I would photograph my entire collection in the same manner of the first photo you posted.

 

I completely agree with @Theodosius . I prefer looking at coin photos with black background. Its easier on the eyes and, IMHO more flattering to the coins in all metals. However, I use white background for my photos for the practical reason of saving ink when printing.

On a related note, I'm glad to see even @dougsmit needs to postprocess to get a pure white background. I thought I was inept all these years in being unable to get the background white in the raw stage. My backgrounds always have a gray or bluish tint until processing.

 

I prefer black backgrounds myself but I recently learned my black backgrounds aren't quite as black as I thought in all my pictures. What looked completely black on my laptop actually included a greyish area on some screens, so I'm going back and postprocessing all affected images to fix this. So in some ways, white was better because I always knew I had to postprocess. With the black backgrounds I didn't realize it until just recently.

 

I hate it when you have to manually outline the coin to remove the background.

It never looks right when zooming in and it is so time consuming.

I am not super skilled at photo processing so I don't know if there is an automated way to do it but I would recommend learning to shoot coins so you don't have to manually trace around them to fix the background.

I think it is bad enough to crop and combine the obverse and reverse into one photo.

 

I've started to photograph coins with a green background, and use automatic background removal software to remove and add a black or white background. The software seems to like the green background and removes it with no problem. Not sure if that would work for some bronzes, but it works like a charm with my silver coins.

 

Below are representations of the evolution of my coin photos (the last not done by me):

Black:



Grey:


White:



I feel each have their merits. Black usually gives incorrect colors but look nice. Grey generally look true to actual appearance but messy. White is always a bit overwashed looking but is cleanest and most applicable for general purposes such as online viewing and printing. I'm sticking to white for the foreseeable future.

 

I'm partial to the white. It gives the coin a lot of visual space in which to breathe.

 

I feel like a white background is more of a professional/business style and the black background more artistic. But what do I know, I used a blue background.

 

Generally speaking I tend to prefer black backgrounds. However, in this case, I prefer the white one for your bronze coin.

One question: I see that some members of this forum use a special background (I think @TIF and @AncientJoe) with a mirror effect.
Very fine examples can be seen on http://www.colosseocollection.com/home

What kind of method/software fo they use to get such an effect?

 

For the record, my prints of black background coins cost exactly the same as those of white background coins. Seventeen cents for 4x6" and $9.99 for 20x30" at Costco gets you a better print than most home printers can make spending that much on blank paper.

Some coins do look OK on gray but it requires processing and (the hard part) deciding how dark gray you want. This is cccccc gray where 000000 is black and ffffff is white.

Certainly refining the edge takes some practice. This one is not perfect when viewed full size but good enough at sizes generally used online. A lot depends on the lighting used when taking the photo. It is always easier to shoot it right than to fix it.


I think I'll stick with black. It is easier. Thanks for the opinions.

 

I first saw that effect with AncientJoe's images and loved it. He had seen it on another forum and loved it. I don't know who first created this look, with a "spotlight" on the coins and shadows below.

You can create such an effect in a photo editing program like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other editing program which uses layers.

The template I made has six layers (various components such as black, the coin shadows, the "lit" area, etc). The coin images are inserted in the template in two more layers (the background around initial coin images is first completely removed). Each coin image is then duplicated, the duplicates flipped to the mirror image position, and dragged or moved below the upright images. The duplicate images are also dragged to a different/lower layer. This description probably won't make sense, especially if you're unfamiliar with working in layers.

Creating the template takes some time but then it is pretty easy to use. The hardest part is removing the background from each coin image pair you want to use, and that's no different from the hassles most of us encounter when editing regular coin images, as Doug's post immediately above shows.

 

Great photos, Mentor ... but as you know

=> I'm a huge fan of white backgrounds ... oh sorry, "white" backgrounds (yah, for some reason the black backgrounds always remind me of 70-80's black velvet posters!) ... maybe I did too many experiments back then?



... anyway ...

I was kinda disappointed in your photos above, for I'm fairly sure that you tried to skew the vote towards black backgrounds? (hey, we all know you're the King of black backgrounds)

For example, the photos below show your attempts in comparing black and white backgrounds on this cool coin:



Hey, I admit that I'm not a photo-expert (photographer), but obviously there are differences in these two examples besides being shot on different backgrounds, eh? (that's pretty tricky my shutter-finger-happy friend)

... ummm, unless it is some sort of Escher-effect? (but I doubt it => there are definitely differences in the two coin-photos, yes?)

 

All of your coin images are excellent! I prefer the black however because it draws your eye to the details within the coin rather than the stark edge against a white background.

 

Many thanks for the explanations! I though it was a little bit easier (I am not so familar with photo editing program - my modest experience is limited to paint.NET ). In any case, the time invested is worth the result!!!!
Maybe it is time for me to invest (time) in one of these programs (there is also GIMP that is the free equivalent of Photoshop). Any suggestion regarding the program?

What do you mean by removing the background? It is cutting around the coin manualy just to keep its shape? I am not sure to have understood...

 

I haven't used GIMP but others here do (@chrsmat71 does, if I recall). Pixlr is a free online photo editor that is very similar to Photoshop Elements, so that might be a good place to start. Warning: if you've not used these before it can be very daunting. There are tons of online tutorials and YouTube videos showing how to do various things with Photoshop and similar tools.

As for cutting out the background, there are several ways to do that. You can use an eraser brush and manually "paint" the eraser. There are other tools which can be used but they are harder to explain. Google searches for photo editing help are your best bet for seeing these in action.

...

(Edited to add an example of using a background removal tool)

Here's an example of using PSE's (Photoshop Element's) "magic background eraser":

Before, with black background:



After using the background eraser (just one little click ). The checkerboard background is used to indicate the absence of any background. Think of it as "clear".