Creating white background when taking pictures of my babies

I'm take regular pictures at home with my newborn baby and i realize that the background is actually ruining the picture most of the time. At my home there are nice places where if i place that to be the BG which will make the picture look nice, but its not practical to do all the time.

Questions

1. How can i set white back ground ? I don't ysing a white board is an option. what other choices i have ?
2. Can i do this post production ? I mean can i do it using software without having to see that i have done a bad crop job. (I'm not at all a professional image editor)
3. I don't have photoshop. Are there free tools like Picassa/Windows Image editor that help to do this quick and easy ?
4. Does my camera D5200 have any options that will help me achieve this better ?

Thank you in advance.

You can try and hang a white sheet in the background ! I know you can remove the background in photoshop but you don't have it and I don't know about the other program's

Not sure what lenses you're using for this, but sometimes a faster lens such as the 50mm 1.8 will leave a lot of the background out of focus and less distracting.

Only the kit lens yet... 18-55mm

A friend of mine uses Free Software GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program


A VDO


Removing photo backgrounds with The Gimp (free photo editing software)

A white sheet should help. You just have to remember that your camera will want to make that white sheet 18% grey because that's it's purpose. But if you use the exposure compensation and give it maybe a stop more light you should be able to improve the overall picture.

​Best of luck.

Thanks SiamThai... I will check this out for sure.

I am getting the 50mm 1.8g for baby (grandchild )photos I am very excited , the grandchild should good also ;-)

I term you want to concentrate on learning the most about right now is Depth of Field (DOF).
That kit lens has a Aperture rated at f/3.5 at the 18mm end and f/5.6 at the 55mm end. You are going to get a very deep depth of field with that lens.
Do an internet search for "Depth of Field". You will find dozens of very good tutorials both in text and video.

Also you might do a white balance preset !

I was researching a DIY white background online just last night. You can also acheive this with lighting as well as a white backdrop of some kind (fabric, paper, etc). Search 'DIY white backdrop' for some good tips.

I'm looking at hanging a white fabric as I don't really have the space for a backdrop stand kit and would need to take it down when it is not in use.

check out you tube....you can get some good tips regarding this and other topics..