Tip: Creating a black background

Dandelion. Boulder, Colorado, 2013

Yes, you can create a black background in Photoshop, but it takes a little bit of work to make it look right. Better to create the black background at the moment of capture.

But how?

Here’s the tip…

Carry a small black, untextured, not shiny cloth with you when you go out to shoot things you might want on a black background for increased separation. Small subjects = small cloth; bigger subjects = bigger cloth. I think macro images lend themselves well to this technique. Simply place the black cloth behind whatever it is you are shooting to block out all those ugly distractions. Try to place the cloth as far behind the main subject as possible so that it is completely out-of-focus and no unwanted detail in your black cloth shows up in the photograph. Avoid wrinkles as well as they can show up in your image as unwanted reflections or lines. In post-processing, you can darken the black background even more to ensure uniformity and near complete blackness.

I know of photographers who carry cloths of various colors–black, white, yellow, blue, etc.–just in case they want a different background color to match a particular subject (often, colorful flowers).

In my image above, I didn’t have a black cloth with me but I happened to be wearing a black cotton T-shirt as we walked around the neighborhood making macro photographs of the spring flowers. The T-shirt worked great as a backdrop to this dandelion head and the shirt also served to stabilize the stem to keep the dastardly little weed from swaying in the very light breeze. In post, I converted the image to black and white after treating it with a bit of glamour glow using the Nik plug-ins Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro.