Photographing an object so that it appears to be sitting on a pure white background can prove to be somewhat tricky for those who have not done it before.

Even more difficult is shooting light-toned objects, as the difference in tone between the object and the white background is not great enough to expose the background 100% white.

It is possible to render objects on a pure white background without the aid of a photo-editing program like Adobe Photoshop, but it typically requires that you use a translucent lighting table, several lights that have variable power settings, along with many scrims, gobos and other light modifiers to control the placement and fall-off of light both above and below the shooting table. As you might imagine, this solution can also be quite expensive, as well as time-intensive.

At the other end of the spectrum, is also possible to use a program like Adobe Photoshop to digitally cut out an object, place it on a pure white background, and even create a custom soft drop shadow for it. The problem with this method is that often times the result looks digitally manipulated or unnatural, and because of this, the effect is not as seamless as it could be.

I have found that the best solution lies somewhere in between these two methods. My advice to those starting out is to work on the lighting of your object first, and then make minor touch-ups in Photoshop afterward. This lesson demonstrates how to light, shoot and edit a semi-reflective object on a white background.

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