Suggestions for the front page

[Asiyura]

Those are nice photos, but your pandora needs to be cleaned!


And to make great looking products photos, you should alway use a lightbox, that way, no problems with shadows or reflections

http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/

 

[gruso]

Gruso, would you please remove photoshop from the title? I don't know what is it, but I smell something fishy about that.

I put it there to help get some attention on your thread...

 

[cosurgi]

Those are nice photos, but your pandora needs to be cleaned!


And to make great looking products photos, you should alway use a lightbox, that way, no problems with shadows or reflections

http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/

No way I'd be buying this. Perfect photos make me feel sick, just like driving in a car with perfect suspension. The only way to make a photo look real-real is to make it not perfect but good. Dirt is the most convincing proof that something is real.


EDIT: ah, it's homemade, sorry Anyway, I have never been doing this kind of product photography, and probably never will, so why would I make this box, just for one occasion, especially if I am persistently having not enough time for all my work...


I'm a total amateur, I hope you like it anyway :rolleyes:

 

[cosurgi]

I put it there to help get some attention on your thread...

hm, sorry no offense, but thank you for good intentions. You could say 'gimp or photoshop help needed', hopefully someone will use my pandora-photos.zip if they can't make photos on their own.

 

[Asiyura]

I wouldn't buy the product from a company that advertise with photos of those products dirty and with greasy fingerprints all around.


It looks like selling second hand instead of brand new products.


I don't understand your hate for good looking photos.


Moreover I think with a lightbox, you may have had the screen clearer, it's not that readable ATM, so it doesn't reflect the real quality of the screen like I've seen on other photos.

 

[gruso]

No probs cosurgi.


Regarding the well loved Pandora pics, I know what you mean about honest photos but most people want clean, practically perfect pictures. If they see a dirty Pandora on the official site, they'll wonder what's going on in the factory. It's like turning up to a job interview with torn clothes and bed hair. 'Image' might be superficial and meaningless, but it's important to project a good one first when you've got something to sell.


Unfortunately I doubt there will be a way to make front page worthy pics without some sort of digital editing. Even when brochures or magazine shoots show real products in action, they're rarely untouched by Photoshop. For example, it's virtually impossible to get good exposure on the case and the LCD at the same time. So they take two photos at different exposures, one that makes the case look good, one that makes the screen look good. Then they overlay them.


Even 'real' product pics need a layer of illusion, because the camera doesn't process things they way our eyes do. Just the way it is.

 

[cosurgi]

Moreover I think with a lightbox, you may have had the screen clearer, it's not that readable ATM, so it doesn't reflect the real quality of the screen like I've seen on other photos.

I did the best that I was able to, now I must do urgent stuff for monday. I'm sorry :/


EDIT: maybe someone here will be able to touch those photos to achieve perfection - removing all dirt and fingerprints...

 

[cosurgi]

why can't I stop?


I removed some dust... I didn't notice it before you told me about that. Now I think that the amount of dust on those photos is just crazy.

high resolution


well maybe I shouldn't bother making those photos in the first place. I should realize that I have no required skills for that.

 

[tsh]

You can make the shadows more natural by using more than one light source, and using lights that are not sharp points (with a sheet of paper in front, or a window). I think a little shadow is often good, and it is probably important to be able to see that it is a photo rather than a render.


Good effort to explain your idea though. I think maybe a gallery of high quality photos (big thumbnails for browsability) might be the best thing to link to from the front page. This can include some that show scale better. Still too early to push this out to the public, I think. By all means set things up now though.

 

[cosurgi]

I still have those windows open on my Pandora, in this exact configuration. I could try melding a screenshot with this photo. This will look better. But I have problems making a screenshot and I feel stupid about that.

xwd -root

prints some errors, that it cannot acquire all colors. On a different workspace, with one fullscreen terminal it works, but on the workspace with game and firefox, it doesn't.


I remember there was some screenshot tool, but I cannot find it on http://apps.open-pandora.org I installed gimp-2.6.8.pnd, but curiously this version of gimp is missing a screenshot option in the menu, or I'm totally blind. At least it's not in the same place as in gimp 2.6.10.

 

[cosurgi]

This is the exact error:

amok:~$ xwd -root -out 2.xwd

X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)

  Major opcode of failed request:  91 (X_QueryColors)

  Value in failed request:  0x1b7e8

  Serial number of failed request:  425

  Current serial number in output stream:  425

amok:~$

It disappears after I closed supertux.


Oh well, I still could make the same arrangement on the screen to make a screenshot, but screenshoting must work, first.


I see that convincing ED is probably not a problem, the problem is to make a professional photo. I cannot be better than I am, we need some help.


I am sorry - Gruso - you were right, please modify title again.


EDIT: again - Here's the link to all photos, high resolution, that I made, so you can try doing some makelift.

 

[Granitehead]

I see that convincing ED is probably not a problem, the problem is to make a professional photo.

If the Pandora was clean the photos wouldn't be bad, in my opinion.

 

[cosurgi]

I see that convincing ED is probably not a problem, the problem is to make a professional photo.

If the Pandora was clean the photos wouldn't be bad, in my opinion.

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow morning. It's the sun light, at 8 in the morning it goes right through the window. I don't have a good artificial lighting.

 

[zapman]

I find you thoughts very true Cosurgi. But I would rather alter the existing pic that ED took, it looks perfectly professional.


How about something like this?


There is lots to see, the only downside is that it seems very crammed... how about an animated gif with different screenshots?

 

[craigix]

^ I like that, but maybe we could have the screen image fading between a few things? We could then get quake, MAME etc. too?


There is bound to be a simple bit of java or html5 for that?

 

[cosurgi]

^ I like that, but maybe we could have the screen image fading between a few things? We could then get quake, MAME etc. too?


There is bound to be a simple bit of java or html5 for that?

we could even use an animated gif, it works everywhere. If you don't know how, I can make animated gif (with fading in between) in gimp, let's just make all pictures that we want in the animation.

 

[Stephane Hockenhull]

If this image is clicked on front page, it should open this high resolution version

I did some cleanup of my favorite one while leaving it reasonably realistically dirty used

the stylus and SD card outside of the 2nd SD slot is very good, it makes people realize what those two "blue things" are which you can't tell as easily if there's a card fully inserted in each slots.


and I like that its not a 100% full shiney CG photo either.


there should be a section of the site with photo(s) of the Pandora with other accessories such as a USB Hub with HDD/SDD, an Ethernet adapter, a small USB MIDI device (I have a Korg Nano-Kontrol here), a full sized keyboard & a small mouse, etc.


push the "its a full PC in truly portable format" feature a bit more which is its main strong point compared to much cheaper OMG EMULAT3RZZ devices and larger netbooks.


PS: I wont leave the full-sized picture online too long, save a copy if you need

 

[milkshake]

I suggest using actual screen grabs imposed onto the original image, I can knock up a simple PHP script that will scan a directory for screengrab jpgs and then pass a list of images on to a simple jQuery script that rotate through the images (with fade transition) all u would have to do then is put images in a folder, the script will take care of the rest.

 

[myownlittlworld]

I tried cleaning up DSC_0034_good_1, and posted the PNG to Imageshack:





The original XCF is available at MediaFire.


Overall, this was a really good product photo! Three suggestions:


1. Use two or more light sources for your lightbox, so you don't get such a sharp shadow. I tried cleaning it up and got it how I liked it.


2. Clean the Pandora really well first. Go at it with both compressed air and electronics cleaning wipes, should run you ~$10 at any decent electronics store (that's about a pound-twenty, for our friends across the pond). I got the largest of the smudges off and some of the specs, but cleaning it all takes more patience than I have at the moment.


3. If you can put your camera on a tripod, take the same picture with different focuses so you get everything in focus, over multiple pictures. Any decent photo editor should have no trouble combining the set of images to get everything in focus. I played with the contrast and the sharpening tools to get both the SD card and the pen in focus. I think I overdid the pen a little though.


Edit 1: Removed comma splice.


Edit 2: Brightened the screenshot (technically, increased the luminosity, but who's keeping count?).

 

[laserbeams]

When you take those product photos, use a smaller aperture (higher f-stop) and longer exposure with a tripod to compensate as necessary to increase the depth of field. The screen is sharp, but your keyboard/SD/stylus are blurry, and that looks unprofessional. For glamour shots, shallow DoF is okay, but for a good product description picture, you REALLY don't want a blurry keyboard - that's one of the best selling points, and sharpening it in PS will just make it look bad.

3. If you can put your camera on a tripod, take the same picture with different focuses so you get everything in focus, over multiple pictures. Any decent photo editor should have no trouble combining the set of images to get everything in focus. I played with the contrast and the sharpening tools to get both the SD card and the pen in focus. I think I overdid the pen a little though.

Don't do that, way too much work and will look weird. Just use a deeper DoF. I'd do it myself, if I had my Pandora!