This tutorials show you how to retouch jewellery photo step by step in Photoshop. Editing jewellery image is a time-consuming and difficult task, it requires many kinds of Photoshop techniques, eye for detail, and a lot of patience. A clear and right process will be save your time and make retouching jewellery easier.
Tips
- Recommend use pen tool when you edit your jewellery photo. Jewellery editers always use pen tool to clip path for area that wants to retouch. It is helpful to exactly define the outline exactly
- Before editing jewellery photos, duplicate the background layer first. If you are not satisfied with the effect, you can go back to the original photo or just remove the retouching layers.
- Use Curve tool to correct the color, Curve tool can provide more exact adjustment than other tools. Sometime a professional retoucher will use many Curve adjustment layers to adjust the light and color. Learn more about Curve tool in adobe.com
Step 1: Make path for jewellery by pen tool
Use the pen tool to create paths for the rings, stone and other areas that need to retouch. This is the first and important step that jewellery editor starts with, though it cost many time.
By those paths, you can change the background easy and create exactly selection to do further retouch.
Step 2: Change jewellery’s background and make element separately
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 element separately.
Step 3: Retouch jewellery metal detail
Use Spot Healing Brush Tool, Clone stamp tool to retouch metal detail. It includes bad reflections, dust, scratches, etc. the key to metal retouching is elements that should be on separate layers and edit separately. So that every retouched element are clear and no interference with each other.
To polish the metals, Retoucher usually adds some highlight and black line onto the metal.
Step 4 : Retouch gem and diamond detail
Use clone stamp tool and Spot Healing Brush Tool retouch stone detail, It includes dust, black spots, scratches, hairs, fibers, etc. Retouching stone needs a lot of patience. Zoom the stone into 250 – 300% to retouch is necessary.
Step 5: Adjust jewellery color and tone
After retouching detail, then start to adjust light and tone. Base on Zone System technique and color theory, Jewellery retoucher usually use Curve tool and Hue/saturation to adjust tone. To correct the different brightness and color coat in different area, It will be useful to add several Curve adjustment layers to different areas
Step 6: Add sharpen to jewellery photo
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 set a different amount of sharpening for metal and stone, usually metal needs less and stone needs more sharpen.
Step 7: Add shadow for the jewellery
Final step, adding a shadow under the jewellery, A realistic shadow can create depth to the jewellery and makes it pop.
Final effect of retouch jewellery photo
Full work process of retouching jewellery photo are include below
- Clipping path for the jewellery.
- Background removal.
- lighting,contrast and color adjustment.
- Metal reflection and imperfection removal.
- Optimize diamond and gem.
- Adding sharpen.
- Create a natural shadow.
