To create a website that displays your artwork accurately, it is key that you have good photographs of your work. A good photograph of a piece of your artwork is the “meat” or substance of your website. It shows the world what you create and should reflect the original piece that you produced. I am a painter, so I do not profess to be a great photographer. I know the importance of having photos that present my work as accurately as possible. In this article, I will share a few tips that I have learned to help me get photographs that accurately reflect my artwork and to help me ready those photographs for my website.

First of all, if you are unable to take good photographs of your work, I suggest hiring a professional photographer who has experience in photographing artwork. Most will provide you with a CD containing digital images of your artwork. This is what I do when I just cannot seem to produce a digital image that represents my artwork correctly.

Dancer in a Chair

To take photographs of my work myself, I use an old, but good, digital camera to shoot my work. It has 4 megapixels, which is sufficient for the imagery that I need for my website. I typically do not shoot indoors. Instead, I set up my artwork outside on bright but overcast days to get even lighting and to avoid harsh shadows. I hang the unframed artwork on a wall or set it on a flat surface (such as a table) so that the piece is level. I position the artwork horizontally to get more of the image into the viewfinder. Then I set my camera on a tripod. I set the tripod up at a distance from the artwork that allows me to best fill the viewfinder with the artwork. I set the camera at the same level as the artwork. I generally use my automatic setting, and I never use flash. The flash tends to wash out the image or create hot spots. What is most important is adequate lighting and good focus. Most other problems can be corrected in a photo editing program.

Everything I am about to discuss assumes that you have a good photo-editing program, such as PhotoShop, which is the program I use. You may not have to follow all these steps, just those that are needed to make your photograph match your original image.

1. Open your digital image in Photoshop.

2. Use the cropping tool to eliminate any extraneous imagery outside the image of your artwork.

3. If the work is skewed, click “select all” then click “Edit” and “Transform”.

4. From this, select “skew” then drag the uneven side(s) until the image fills the screen.

5. Click enter, then click “select” and “deselect”.

6. If the light is incorrect, select “image”, “adjustments”, and “curves.” Grab the diagonal line in the box and pull it up or down until the lighting best fits your image.

7. If the color is off, click “image” and then “Color Balance”. You will see a box with three sliders. The first goes from Cyan to Red, the next from Magenta to Green, and the last from Yellow to Blue. Drag along the appropriate slider (s) until your image best matches the color of your original piece.

8. If the color seems dull or too strong, select “Image” “adjustments”, “Hue/Saturation”. Drag the saturation slider in either direction until the color best matches your original.

9. Make sure your image is in RGB mode while you are making corrections.

10. Convert your RGB files to the sRGB color space or profile. This is the color space used by most web browsers. If you omit this step, your images may look washed out (due to low contrast).

11. Resize your image for the web: Typically, you want to be under 100KB file size for fast loading. However, to fit on most screens you should size the image’s pixel dimensions to an image width of 900 pixels or less by a height of 550 pixels or less.

12. Now save your file at the right size. Click “File,” “save as,” title your work, and select the “jpeg” option.

(Note: Not all jpegs are equal. If you have a FolioLink account, login and click on the Help link at the top of the screen in the backend of your account. Type “optimize images?” in the search bar and click on the Search button. Click on “How do I optimize my images?” to find out how to create web ready jpeg images that are under 225 KB file size.)

Coalesce

You may need to practice with Photoshop for a while until you get the hang of the tools. Once you do, you’ll have terrific images that look very much like your original artwork.

Posted with writer's permission.

See Steven’s work at www.stevendaluz.com