How to Properly Use a Green Screen in Product Photography

A green screen is a backdrop that is used to shoot footage or film that will then be superimposed over another background in a process called chroma keying. Green Screens allow photographers to isolate their subject from the bright green background and then insert a different background during the editing process.

How to Use a Green Screen

1) Set Up Your Screen

Place your green screen so that it will fill the entire background of your shot. Make sure that you have set the screen so that it will be completely flat, any wrinkles or tears will detract from the overall effect of the superimposed background.

2) Set Up Your Lighting

While having the proper lighting on your subject is always crucial to a great product photograph, that same lighting will not be enough for proper green screen usage. You will need a separate lighting setup to light your green screen as well, otherwise it will look patchy and be more difficult to key out during the editing process. There are many different lighting set up options online that will be extremely helpful for your lighting set up.

3) Place Your Product

This may seem like an obvious step, but it is important to remember that the placement of your subject in front of the green screen is crucial to how successful the shot will end up being. A good rule of thumb is that you will want as much space as possible between your product and the screen. If the product is directly in front of the screen, it can pick up a greenish hue that will make editing much more difficult and proper placement will help to avoid this.

4) Shoot

Once your product, green screen and lighting are all properly set up, now comes the fun part — shooting your photos! As a product photographer you will know to take a good number of shots of your product so that you will be able to find the perfect one to edit your background onto.

5) Edit

Now that you have your photos taken, it will be time to edit out the green screen background as well as doing any additional touchups to your product. While the process will vary from program to program, generally there is an option to automatically remove backgrounds from photos that will make it much easier to edit out your background. After removing the green background now you will edit in your desired background and finish the editing process.

There are many more important rules to remember when doing great product photography, but with these tips using a green screen should be much more simple for you and will definitely help to increase the quality of your images!