The Ansel Adams of luger photography!

Try a greater distance between the pistol and the background color.

Put them into separate light pools. One flat light for the background. Another key light and accent light for the pistol. It may be necessary to use shields to block light.

This should help eliminate the color reflections.

While this effort in photographing is greater, the photoshop work should be easier.

It's also possible to paint out masks in photoshop.

Marc

Your efforts have truly paid off!

I actually like the photo with the stand vs the floating...

The close ups are truly professional qualtity!!

Bill

One great background to use is photographers' seamless paper. It is available in lots of colors. My favorite is a grey very similar to the greycard used for metering light precisely. (18% grey is very close to Caucasian skin tone, so in a pinch, a hand is always handy.) It provides a neutral background, and with proper lighting used for the shoot, I've never really had to Photoshop afterwards, except to remove blemishes--such as a cord one wouldn't necessarily want to see in a pic of a lamp. That paper? It usually comes on a 10' roll which is also very long and, I presume, expensive. I've never had to buy any, however, because a photo studio will give you a remnant, or, damaged, roll. A photographic setup can use-around 20', since it's run from the dispenser down the wall and across the floor, to eliminate the corner ordinarily visible at their juncture; and a studio will usually discard a roll when it's too small for them to use. I once obtained a partial roll that had been bent in handling, about 1/3 along its length. I put it on the miter saw and excised the offending area; this left me with a 3' and a 6' roll, plenty wide for my purposes.

Another photographic attachment to help us in our documentation of Lugers is the polarizing filter. This fits over the lens, and is adjusted to filter out polarized light--exactly the kind of light bouncing a reflection from a gun's surface to the lens. Adjusting to eliminate offending reflections is easy; you get what you see if you have an SLR and the viewfinder shows the same image that the lens sees, and will be recorded. My current equipment is somewhat lacking because the filter that I used to use does not fit the camera I'm using now. I'll get around this somehow and use the technology for some, I hope, good Luger documentation. Promises, promises...

Excellent work! The detail is razor sharp! I too have found that once you start working with Photoshop and get the hang of it, you become addicted! You suddenly realize that you'll never be able to look at another digital photo without asking yourself how it could be improved, or, if it has been "manipulated" by someone else.

I missed seeing this thread earlier but am really impressed with your photos! Very appreciative of your "how-to" reply also. I'm still struggling with photography so any of the tech help makes it a little easier.