A mug o' Beer

[travis4567]

[Mike Buckley]

If you explain your setup, I might be able to provide ideas about other options.

The color of the beer takes on a green cast on my calibrated, profiled monitor. However, I know absolutely nothing about beer, so this may be dead-on.

Parts of the froth are lacking detail.

Notice the texture in the background in the top right area. That's probably not what you wanted. You probably would like the image better if the background is devoid of that texture. Perhaps second best, you might want that texture throughout the background.

What is the tabletop material? The reason I ask is that it's reflecting only certain parts of the mug.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Travis!

Makes me thirsty! I had this written up and got distracted before I posted it. Darned if it doesn’t mirror what Mike said, but here it is anyway for what its worth!



Hard to say how to do anything much different without really knowing your lighting set-up.

So just a couple of basic observations? I wonder what is going on with the background starting at about the beer towards the right?

You have a large amount of clipping on both ends with this and the color seems a little off maybe. Its not so bad with the shadow end to have it since it is shot on a predominantly black background, and its not so bad having the white end on a glossy subject. You need to have both white and black reflections on a glossy subject or else it just looks matte. But the foam is definitely blown pretty bad. Mostly on top and to either side of the dark foam stripe running down the middle. I would want the foam more evenly lit to do away with that dark section in front and not so much that so much detail is lost in the highlights if this were mine.

I would do some more cleanup on the shot as a whole and I think I would either want the reflection showing a little better or I might just do away with it altogether.

Travis, if you feel like posting or explaining your lighting scheme I’d sure be interested.