Floating Product Photography

How to do floating product photography on a black background – Watch on YouTube

Product photography does not always have to be on a white backgroud. Some products look great on black! But how do you get that floating product photography on a black background? In this article, we will show you a few things to think about for your black backgrounds.

Black background product photography

We’re shooting a Rubik’s cube for this tutorial. It’s an iconic product and looks great on a black background like this. The process for shooting black background images is surprisingly simple. It’s all in the lighting and settings.

Firstly, you are going to need a black or at least very dark shooting surface. We used a black piece of plastic. It’s a good idea to keep it as clean as possible to avoid dirt and dust showing up in the background of your images.

Set up your camera above your shooting surface on a tripod, facing downwards. You should aim to fill as much of the frame with your product as possible. Don’t worry about the backdrop showing. You need to centre the product on the backdrop and pay special attention to any part of the black background that overlaps the product as scratches or dirt here will make it harder to cut around the product later.

Product Photography Lighitng

Lighting is very important. You need to make sure that your product is well-lit and well exposed, but without spilling too much light onto the background right behind the product. Extra light on the edges will be easier to remove, but if it touches the product, it has to go!

To make this easier, it’s a good idea to raise the product up from the background. We placed our Rubik’s cube on a small pedestal and held the angle in place with some blu tack.

This will help to keep the light away from the backdrop, but also put the background out of focus, further removing it from the product and making them easier to separate.

We used the Adaptalux Studio to add light to only the cube. it has flexible and highly controllable lighting arms that allow us to light all sides of the cube without spilling much light onto the background!

It also allows us to get a handle on the reflections. Our backdrop is reflective, but also the sides of the cube. Careful placement of the lights is important to keep the area around the subject dark, but also not show any ugly reflections on the sides of the cube.

Lastly, we are able to cut around the cube with ease as the black background is consistant around the edges of the cube. The extra reflections, lights and edges of the backdrop can all be painted out with pure black. Use the burn tool set to shadows to fully darken the area around the subject.

Alternatively, you could simply use the selection tools in photoshop to select and mask out the background entirely. With a consistent colour (Black) to the background, photoshop will have no problems finding the edges of the product. If you do cut out the product, you could try adding some gradients to the middle layers to make the colours jump out from the product into the background!

This is far from the only way to achieve black background product photography, but it’s a quick and easy method to keep your backgrounds dark and products bright!

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