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Vineyard 511 – Wine photo magic

Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci


Recently, I completed another project for my friends at Vineyard {511} in Calistoga. Aside from creating classic wine bottle shots of their current releases, I was tasked with photographing a minimally styled bottle shot that included a wine bottle and glass of wine.
The challenge??? Clip out the bottle and glass from the background so the photo can be overlaid on their website, which has a photo background.
This may sound pretty easy but if you want it to look seamless and somewhat natural, you need to implore some Photoshop magic. While I won’t get into the specifics on how to do this (many tutorials can be found on the web), I will show you the following examples of the results along the way.
First the original photo of the bottle and glass photographed together.
Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci
The original shot of wine bottle and glass on a white background.

If we simply cut out the bottle and glass from the white background and laid it on a photo or textured background on a website or printed collateral, the result would look awkward. Notice how the bowl of the glass looks like a white blob.

Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci
Here’s the original photo of wine bottle and glass overlaid on a black and white photo.
Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci
Here’s the original photo of wine bottle and glass overlaid on the same background photo but this time it’s color.

Next we tweak our photo to make the bowl and stem of the glass transparent and accentuate the highlight on the right side of the glass to make the background show through. And voila! We get the following results…

Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci
Now here’s the finished photo where the bowl and stem of the glass have been made transparent so the background shows through.
Napa wine photography by Jason Tinacci
Now here’s the finished photo where the bowl and stem of the glass have been made transparent so the background shows through… this time against a color background.