YRSCommercial,
Post Production.

YRSCommercial, product photographer. When it comes to image manipulation or enhancement our approach is the same - whether it's your image or ours. So we thought you'd like to here how we do it for our own images becuase its the same as it is for yours.

As a commercial & product photographer you can imagine that a large proportion of the commission can visible post production - the clipping to white or PNG (transparent), the correction of the colour etc. And then there are the suitble changes we do for other images. We post produce all our images - from food to property.

We work exclusively within the Adobe product set and work to their RGB. Much of this is for stills images, however, we are now working with video. Image compression to reduce the size of the image is available if you let us know - this is becoming a bigger problem than before as the image files are increasing, regardless of clipping size, due to the amount of data they contain (much better images than in the past!).

All images once processed, are then added to the digital archive (as of 2018 we manage over 30TB of images in a mirrored server environment for clients). We only provide up to TIFF format, no RAW files are released. EXIF data is added to each image - see GDPR statement.

Post Production Product Images

We manage clipping post production in-house up to about 1000 images - this means outsourcing above that number to our partners where they have more hands to manage the process.

All clipping is manual (no magic wand...) for accuracy and the clipped object saved to either or both white and transparent depending on client needs. Objects shot are colour matched and lighting corrections made if required during the process. Images are then resized to client specification in batch, so the resulting collection is ready to use straight away.

Collections and composite images are also managed at this stage should the client let us know what is needed. File names can be matched to product codes or SKU numbers if you tell us before the post product occurs, free of charge. Telling us afterwards results in an admin charge for all the file renaming.

YRSCommercial, product photographer.

Interiors, Property & Architectural Images

Depending on whether the images are shot internally or externally, mood lighting is adjusted to create strong saturated colours in all the images, shadows managed and sometimes enhanced to create deeper, moody images for effect. Beyond colour matching and luminescence controls being applied, the rest of post production revolves around lens distortion issues for confined spaces - walls and corners being upright etc.

We always shoot the external images using glass digital polarisers, so we may also adjust the colour spectrum due to this.

All other images

Beyond the above most of the post production work is colour management - food must look like food not off colour, landscapes should not be over enhanced with too much saturation etc that sort of thing. We check for any dust which can occur due to the environment we have shot in, colour balance due to lighting changes (a real issues in warehouse light work) and of course cropping to make the image stronger.

Image checks

This last bit really is all down to the client and a little know we may have. This is a list of things they do not want in the photograph, or should be in the photograph and we simply set the list against each image as part of the processing workflow.

Now what about your images...

We know it's tempting to try the phone when it comes to getting an image of your product, interiors or business in action - you see the scene unfold and snap you've got it. Only it doesn't quite look right. The product seemed to have good lighting only to find it didn't etc and don't forget chef who grabs a snap as he lays the plate using the 'orange!!' heat lamp as a light source... We have seen it all!. It might all sound like its saving you money but when your shop front is now on the internet you really cannot afford take the chance. 'It'll do' as an image stratgy doesn't work. We won't preach you need a professional, there's no point.

So if you do think they need improving, send them over to us and we'll see what we can do to clean them up, if necessary clip it out, emlarge it or resize it that sort of thing. We work to a standard rate per image so you can work out the totoal cost by mulitplying the number of images you want cleaning up.