Hi everybody

[Meghan Photography]

My name is Meghan, I am a beginnner photographer.....I work for this big jewelry company and I just took a series of jewelry photos....I wonder how to retouch them, any tips?

 

[photo1x1.com]

Hi Meghan, jewelry is one of the more difficult things to shoot. Diamonds, Svarovski chrystals and everything that is highly transparent, nicely cut and polished often looks dull and flat under flashlight.
The colors often completely disappear. If that is why you are looking for help, I guess you need to be an absolute photoshop pro to get that play of colors into your images, because it has to be composed in photoshop.
It is "easier" to get those colors while shooting. For a beginner it is easiest to use direct sunlight rather than a studio environment. That sounds rather weird but try it. The colors are outstanding. The difficulty however is the background outdoors. Shooting transparent stuff on white background means you have to underexpose the shot and isolate the background later in photoshop. Shooting it on black might make the diamonds look not as beautiful as you want them to, plus the background will usually get pretty bright rather than pitch black.
Do you have a sample of your work so that we get an idea of what you were able to get out of your camera?

 

[Meghan Photography]

I tried with daylight, but I get so much reflections and those are so hard to retouch......i cant shoot on black, boss wants white background......on all images.....i better start learning photoshop

 

[photo1x1.com]

Do you have an image to share?

One thing I could think of as a workaround is using some sort of light tent outdoors to avoid reflections on metal. Then for the stones you quickly remove the tent and take another shot (without moving camera or jewelry!!! - that said you probably need to adjust exposure, that can be done with thethered shooting - with a USB connection to your computer - , or some sort of app). In Photoshop you put the "stone-layer" over the "metal-layer" and remove (mask) the unwanted parts.

Other than that there are quite a few photoshop jewelry retouching tutorials on youtube. Photoshop has a steep learning curve, but those tutorials may help you only learn the things you need to know - in case you are not enthusiastic enough to learn it all .

One more option would be to outsource retouching - google "jewelry retouching service". Usually that should be the better option, if photoshop is not something you´d ever need other than for this job. Those people do that for a living and are MUCH quicker than you are - well, and time is money .

 

[table1349]

This might give you some ideas. How To Photograph Jewelry For Catalogs | Fstoppers

 

[Designer]

I wonder how to retouch them, any tips?

Hi, Meghan, and welcome!

What photo editing software do you have?

 

[Frank F.]

lots of black cloth is your friend managing reflections and clamps and tripods to keep the cloth in position

 

[dennybeall]

I noticed in jewelry stores these days they have lights in the cases that make the jewelry ABSOLUTELY SPARKLE!!!
If I was in your position I would look to find out what those lights were and try to setup using one or more.
One article on the subject suggests fluorescent lights rated between 3000 and 3500Kelvin mounted close and above the jewelry......

 

[photo1x1.com]

I noticed in jewelry stores these days they have lights in the cases that make the jewelry ABSOLUTELY SPARKLE!!!
If I was in your position I would look to find out what those lights were and try to setup using one or more.
One article on the subject suggests fluorescent lights rated between 3000 and 3500Kelvin mounted close and above the jewelry......

Interesting read. During my photography education though, I learned that the sparkling comes from the refraction of the light and that the sun has the widest spectrum of different colors. Fluorescents, LEDs, etc. are missing a few parts of the spectrum and therefore are not as colorful. Only heat wire lamps are said to create a similar spectrum as the sun. Also the optimum light source is very small and strong - so a spotlight is best (besides the sun itself). I tried various things in Studio, but nothing could keep up with the sun when it comes to sparkling jewelry. That is why I was suggesting outdoor shots in the first place.

 

[mariska2016]

I tried with daylight, but I get so much reflections and those are so hard to retouch......i cant shoot on black, boss wants white background......on all images.....i better start learning photoshop

In Photoshop all simple, it can be learned about a month, especially as a beginner photographer always need a small touch-up

 

[Meghan Photography]

lots of black cloth is your friend managing reflections and clamps and tripods to keep the cloth in position

i think black cloth would create even more reflections......
I still think how to make my setup work....in the sun...

 

[Meghan Photography]

I shot today around 50 diamond images, I don't have time to retouch them. Is anybody here that is good with retouching and has good price? I was looking on the net for the best jewelry retouching services.....most have over inflated prices....or the samples on their sites are super bad.....this site I prefer the best for my rings retouch http://www.photoeditingretouching.com/jewelry-retouching, did anybody work with them?

 

[photo1x1.com]

That site looks really good, but most of the sites, including this one have a try before you buy option. I would choose a few, send them the same pictures and see what they come up with.

In regard to your setup:
Black does enhance the metal reflections, but I´d rather use black cardboard than cloth. How you setup your lighting depends a lot on how much time you have for every single picture.
You can use different sized pieces of black cardboard (or cut pieces of black painted styrofoam board which have the advantage that they stand on their own), and place them in a way that reflections are enhanced. English is not my main language, so I hope you understand what I mean. The blacks make the outlines, the contours of your rings for example. But placing them perfectly for every single piece of jewelry takes up quite some time. But you can also just leave them in place if you don´t want the perfect reflections, but just a few here and there.
Everything else has to be white. So a shooting tent with enough room to place your black pieces would be a good option.
If you can easily remove one side of the shooting tent to let the sun in (without moving the jewelry), that would be the perfect setup.
Then you´d shoot one image with sunlight (slightly darker camera settings - for the stones) and one image with closed sides for the rest. In your editing program you open these two in layers, roughtly mask the stones on the sunimage, and put it over the other. Then you flatten the image and send it to an editing service. That should give you the best possible quality in a rather quick workflow.