7 step to professionally edit jewelry photo
eEditing jewelry is a time-consuming task, Professional jewelry photo editing needs much time and efforts.
One should definitely keep in mind that with the help of Photoshop it is necessary to clean metal making it look polish, capturing diamond true, vivid colors, correct color tone and brightness , remove every blemish, scratch, dust, even your fingerprint, if it is needed (e.g. background color change, adding shadow and retouch all the jewelry drawbacks.
True professionals are sure to use many techniques to make the photographs of the top quality.it requires many kinds of Photoshop technique, eye for detail and a lot of patience. This article show you that how to edit jewelry photo to high quality step by step.
Key Tips
Recommend use pen tool. A jewelry retoucher always use pen tool to clip path to make selection of the area that want to retouch.
The pen tool in jewelry editing work is a highly versatile feature used to create jewelry vector shapes and make custom selections. With Photoshop’s pen tool, you can create silhouettes by outlining objects, cut portions of the jewelry out of the background, and combine lines and curves to make easily scalable images.
If you want to pursue a career as a jewelry retoucher, being comfortable with the pen tool in Photoshop is a must. A professional jewelry retoucher may rely on the pen tool to help them single out part of an image and cut out the background, to change the background to transparent background, or recolor the background.
Before retouching jeweler photos, create adjustment layer first. If you are not satisfied with the effect, you can go back to the original photo or just remove the adjustment layers.
Adjustment Layer allows you to create a transparent layer where you can make direct changes to your photograph without making any changes to your original.
In Photoshop, layers are used to work on individual parts of an image while not affecting other parts. it will be very easy to modify your image, correct brightness , change colors, clean dust, put different images on the same page, and the most important is you retouch anything without modifying your original photo.and you can turn back anytime if you want.
Use Curve tool to correct the color, Curve tool can provide more exact adjustment than other tools. Sometime a professional retouch will use many Curve adjustment layers to adjust the light and color.
One of my favorite tools that our jewelry retoucher use on regular basis is the Curves Adjustment tool, which not only helps me in creating desired contrast for the jewelry images, but at the same time it allows me to color correct diamond. Our retoucher use this tool instead of widely used Color Balance Adjustment tool.
The Color Balance Adjustment tool gives jewelry editing limited options when it comes to correcting my images, whereas the Curves Adjustment tool allows to color correct specific areas of the image without affecting the rest of the image.
Step 1: the first step of edit jewelry photo is making clipping path
Use the pen tool to create path for the rings, stone and other area that need to retouch. This is the first and important step that jewelry retoucher start with though it cost many time. By those path, you can change the background easy and create exactly selection to do further retouch.
Clipping with the Pen tool is done in several stages:
- First of all, select the Pen tool, then create your first anchor point on the edge of the object you wish to clip.
- Next, set down your second anchor point a little further off, but this time, hold down the click button and gently slide your mouse: the result will be the creation of two tangents.
- Thanks to the Convert Point tool (shortcut “alt”), you can adjust these two tangents so that the Bezier curve follows the contour of the object you wish to clip. If you feel it is necessary, you can also move an anchor point by using the White Arrow tool (shortcut “ctrl”).
- All you need to do now is to keep following the same principle, creating as many anchor points as required on the object’s contours, until the Bezier curves entirely cover the object.
Step 2: Change background for jewelry
Convert the ring’s path to selection and change background to white. Copy metal, gem and diamond to separate layers. So we can retouch each elements separately.
It is vital to mention that all elements of the jewelry need to have their own paths and layers as each element will need to be edited separately。The settings that apply to ‘metals’ layers cannot be applied to a ‘side-stone’ or a ‘main-stone’ layer.
Convert a path to a selection border using the current settings
- Select the path in the Paths panel.
- To convert the path, do one of the following:
- Click the Load Path As a Selection button at the bottom of the Paths panel.
- Ctrl‑click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the path thumbnail in the Paths panel
Step 3: Clean jewelry metal detail
Use Spot Healing Brush Tool, Clone stamp tool to retouch metal detail. It include bad reflections, dust, scratches etc. the key of metal retouching is element should be on separately layers and edit separately. So that every retouched element are clear and not interference with each other.
To polish the metals, Retoucher usually add some highlight and black line onto the metal.
When retouching jewelry with the Clone Stamp tool, our retoucher always zoom in – in fact, we recommend zoom way in (potentially to 100% and beyond).
Zooming in will help isolate the jewelry metal, gem or diamond area you are working on, and it will allow you to work with far more detail and precision than would otherwise be possible. Make your changes look as good as you can with this higher level of detail, then when you zoom back out, the changes will blend in perfectly.
A shortcut for zooming quickly is to hold the Alt/Option key with your left hand while using the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out. You can also use Ctrl/Cmd and the + or – key on the keyboard. That way, you can zoom in and out with speed.
Step 4: Clean and retouch jewelry stone detail
Use clone stamp tool and Spot Healing Brush Tool retouch stone detail, It include dust, black spots, scratches, hairs, fibres etc. Retouching stone needs a lot of patience. Zoom the stone into 100 – 200% to retouch is necessary
When photographing jewelry, every blemish, scratch, dust, even your fingerprint may show up in a high-resolution photo
no matter how hard you try to keep your jewelry clean, there can be some dirt not easily visible to the naked eye.
Most of the time stone editing consists of removing dust, unnecessary scratches, unwanted shadows and highlights, dealing with blown out facets
Step 5 : Adjust jewelry brightness and color
After retouching detail, then start to adjust light and color tone. Base on Zone System technique and color theory, jewelry retoucher usually use Curve tool and Hue/saturation to adjust tone. To correct the different brightness and color coat on different area, It will be useful to add several Curve adjustment layers to different area. Learn more about color theory
our jewelry retoucher usually use below 5 Photoshop adjustment tools to adjust color, but Curves tool is our best tool.
- Adjust some colors but not others, if you wish to make one particularly shade stand out from the rest, then the Selective Color adjustment is perhaps the easiest way to do that. It gives you sliders to adjust, and it is simple to use.
- Adjust brightness and contrast The Levels adjustment provides you with a histogram. It can control the brightness, contrast, lights and darks in your image, as well as color.
- Use the Hue/Saturation tool. The Color Balance is similar to the Curves tool, only it provides a far more color-centric edit, rather than one based on the tone of your picture.
- Tweak the shades in your image,Black and White simply desaturates your image, but the adjustment comes in the form of sliders that offer you the ability to tweak the tones of each shade in your image.
- Use Curves to alter tone,Curves works by tweaking the strands in the graph, and as well as altering tone, you can use the drop-down menu to change the colour channels, such as red, green and blue in an RGB image.
Step 6 : Add sharpen to jewelry
After retouching detail and adjusting color, then add sharpen for the photo to remove soft or fuzzy. retoucher usually use Unsharp Mask or other sharpen software to do it ,It is important to sets different amount of sharpening for metal and stone, usually metal needs less and stone needs more sharpen.
How to choose the correct Amount setting for jewelry photo sharpening
Unsharp Mask’s default Amount value of 50% is probably too subtle for diamond, and the maximum value of 500% is too strong to metal, what’s the correct value to use?
The correct Amount setting will depend on the size of your jewelry image, and different element of the jewelry. the amount of detail in the image, and on the target output (print or the web). But you can use the following guideline to help you choose the right setting:
Print: For large, high resolution images being sharpened for print, an Amount value of 150% to 200% is recommended.
Email/Web: For smaller, low resolution images that will be shared online, a lower Amount value of 50% to 70% is usually all you need.
Jewelry Metal:an Amount value of 30% to 50% is recommended.
Jewelry Diamond:n Amount value of 100% to 200% is recommended.
Step 7 : Create shadow for jewelry
Final step, adding a shadow under the jewelry, A realistic shadow can create depth to the jewellery and makes it pop.
If you want to make your jewelry photo professional, you need to know how to create shadows. Shadows add richness to the jewelry photo.Without shadows, we cannot tell the position of the jewelry in a space because shadows influence the perception of the audience in 3D visualizations.
From a viewer’s perspective, shadows help determine the relative position of the jewelry and its size in a scene. Thanks to shadow effects, viewers are able to understand the geometry of a jewelry.
The shadows that jewelry cast in a scene could be described as either soft or hard. The distance between jewelry and lighting could also influence the hardness or softness of the shadows as well as the intensity of the light. The general rule is that the darker the shadow, the brighter the lighting. Shadows become softer or lighter as the jewelry is drawn further away from a lighting.
Editing jewelry photo final effect
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