Blog, 2026-11-10

How to take great before and after stain photos

Short answer: take your before photo from a spot you can find again, in steady light, with something for scale. Clean. Let the surface dry completely. Then stand in the exact same spot, at the same time of day, and take the after photo with the same zoom and no filters. Wet surfaces and moved shadows ruin more comparisons than anything else.

Why bother

There is a special joy in watching an orange stripe disappear off a white fence. There is a special pain in showing someone your phone and hearing, "Huh, I think it looks about the same." A good before and after settles that. It also helps your neighbor with the same orange driveway figure out whether the job is worth a Saturday.

If you clean something with SpraySticks and want to share it, we would love to see it. Honest results, including the ones that took two passes, are more helpful than a perfect highlight reel.

Before you clean: set up the shot

1. Mark your spot. Stand somewhere you can return to exactly. A seam in the concrete, a fence post, a corner of the house. Some people drop a small piece of tape on the ground where their toes go.
2. Hold the phone the same way. Same height, same angle, same zoom. Chest height and straight on is easy to repeat. Do not use the extra zoom lens for one photo and the main lens for the other.
3. Include a reference. A fence post, a sprinkler head, a drain or a shoe in the frame helps people understand size and makes lining up the after photo easier.
4. Take a wide shot and a close shot. The wide one shows the whole stain in context. The close one shows the texture.
5. Note the time and the weather. Your phone does the time for you. Overcast days give the most even light.

Light is everything

Harsh noon sun creates hard shadows and glare on white vinyl and gelcoat. Late afternoon light turns everything golden, which is lovely for a sunset and terrible for judging whether a stain is gone. Even, cloudy light is your best friend. If it is sunny, shoot with the sun behind you or wait until the area is in full shade.

Turn off the flash. It flattens texture and bounces off shiny surfaces. And do not shoot one photo in the morning and one in the afternoon. The light moved, so the comparison is off.

While you clean

A mid-job photo can be fun, especially with our colored lines. HOME turns the water green, MARINE turns it blue and AUTO turns it red, so a photo while the product is working shows exactly where you sprayed. Keep your gloves and eye protection on while you shoot. Your phone can survive a splash better than your eyes can.

Put the phone somewhere dry and out of the spray zone. Rust remover and phone screens are not friends. Never mix the product with bleach to "speed up" a demo, and rinse the plants nearby before and after, even if they are not in the shot.

After you clean: wait for dry

This is the big one. Wet concrete looks darker than dry concrete. Wet vinyl reflects light differently. If you take the after photo right after rinsing, you might be photographing water, not results.

Give the surface time to dry fully. On a warm day that can be an hour or so. On a cool, damp day it can take longer. Then go back to your spot, line up the frame with your before photo, match the zoom and shoot.

Line them up

Most phone photo apps can show two images side by side. Put the before on the left and the after on the right. Crop both the same way. Skip filters, brightness boosts and contrast tweaks. If the result is good, it will look good without help. If it needs a second pass, the photo will tell you that too, which is useful.

Details that make a photo useful

A caption makes a before and after ten times more helpful. Include:

• The surface, like concrete driveway, white vinyl fence, vinyl siding, fiberglass hull or painted wheel
• What caused the stain, if you know
• How old the stain was, roughly
• The strength, like one stick or two in a 24 oz bottle, or pods in a sprayer
• How long you let it work and how many passes it took

Privacy check before you post

Crop out house numbers, street signs, license plates, mail and faces of anyone who did not agree to be in the picture. A great driveway shot does not need your address in the corner.

Need a stain to photograph?

Pick a guide for the surface you are working on: concrete, white vinyl fence, vinyl siding, boats or car wheels. Remember to test a hidden spot first and skip marble, limestone and other natural stone. Grab sticks or pods in the shop, read how it works, and find more how-tos on the blog.

Spinach check: SpraySticks shares a compound with spinach. That does not make it food or gentle. Gloves, eye protection, keep kids and pets away, never mix with bleach, and read the SDS.

Common questions

Why do my after photos look worse than the before?

Usually it is the light or the water. Wet concrete and wet siding look darker, so an after photo taken right after rinsing can make a clean surface look stained. Shadows that moved between shots do the same. Wait until the area is fully dry, shoot at the same time of day as your before photo, and stand in exactly the same spot so the comparison is fair.

Should I edit or filter my before and after photos?

Keep edits off or identical for both photos. Filters, brightness tweaks and contrast boosts make it hard to tell what changed because of the cleaning and what changed because of the edit. If you need to crop or straighten, apply the same crop to both images. Honest, unfiltered photos are more useful to anyone trying to judge whether a method will work on their own stain.

What should I include with my photos when I share them?

The useful details are the surface, how old the stain was, the strength you used, how long you let it work, and how many passes it took. For example, white vinyl fence, sprinkler stain, two sticks in a 24 oz bottle, eight minutes, one pass. Leave out anything that shows your house number, street signs, license plates or faces of people who did not agree to be in the picture.