Getting started
How to photograph a reference on your phone
The single input to everything else. Five minutes of care here is worth more than any setting downstream.
- 01
Flat, hanging or held
A flat lay on a plain floor, a hanger against a plain wall, or somebody holding it up. All three work. What matters is that the whole garment is in frame and nothing is folded under itself.
- 02
Ordinary daylight
Near a window, with the light coming from the side rather than behind the garment. Do not use the flash. The lighting in the output is generated, so the reference only has to be clear, not beautiful.
- 03
Square on
Hold the phone parallel to the garment rather than at an angle. A tilted reference makes the cut ambiguous, and an ambiguous cut is the one thing that is genuinely hard to recover.
- 04
Show the detail separately
If the piece has embroidery, a border or a print that matters, take a second close photograph of it. Detail carried in a close shot survives better than detail three metres away.
- 05
Leave the background alone
A plain floor, a plain wall, or a plain bedsheet. The room in the reference is discarded, so the only thing a busy background does is make the garment harder to read.
Questions
- Does it need to be on a person?
- No. A flat lay or a hanger shot is completely sufficient, and often cleaner.
- Can I use an old product photograph?
- Yes. That is exactly how a catalogue refresh works.