I am an amateur, so I do not have a professional environment or professional-level skills.
When shooting products, I tend to want to move quickly, so I often think:
- Cropping (subject position and margins) can be handled during development
- Angle and level can also be corrected during development
With capable development software and the idea that RAW development can fix almost anything, it is easy to push more and more work into post-processing.
In the end, problems such as these appear:
- The subject was shot too large, and correcting the tilt caused part of it to extend outside the frame
- Small differences in lighting make the set look inconsistent after cropping
- Centering and size adjustment become troublesome
Each time, I end up thinking that I should have done it properly during shooting.
Turbo Guide Line helps you do as much as possible at the shooting stage.
- Decide margins based on cropping tolerance
- Place the subject reliably in the center
- Keep the subject angle consistent
- Keep the image perfectly level
In this example, a miniature car is used as the subject. The subject angle is set to 15 degrees. Considering cropping tolerance, the Margin is set to 70%.
Turbo Guide Line has started. The Center Cross, Margin, and
Edge lines are configured under Option > Startup.
When they are configured under Startup, they can be
drawn at any time with Line > Startup Draw.
Select the angled line type (Angle). Set the angle to 15 degrees and enable Negative because the line slopes downward to the right.
Adjust the subject so that its width fits within the margin lines. Align with the front wheel, draw an angled line, and adjust the rear wheel position. Draw a horizontal line at the front wheel. At this point, use W-Line to check the center position. Adjust the vertical position.
The subject has been centered using W-Line. Once the guide lines are established, the rear view is also easy to position.
Turn the car around and adjust it in the same way as the front view.
Leveling is also easy. No matter how precisely the camera is leveled, what ultimately matters is whether the image is level on the screen. If you align it on the screen, there is no ambiguity.
The image is now level.
Next, shoot a different miniature car.
The miniature car is a different size.
Align it in the same way using a 15-degree angled line.
The left and right margins have been adjusted. For the top and bottom, use a horizontal W-Line to center the subject.
Because the shooting stage was handled carefully, only fine adjustments are needed in post-processing.