7 Steps for Silver Jewelry Photo Retouching
Cameras often fall short of capturing the radiance of silver jewelry. The shine and intricate designs may appear dull even with the best camera and lighting equipment because silver jewelry is simply more beautiful in real life.
Photos often need a little help from jewelry photography retouching to give them that wow factor. With years of jewelry photo editing experience in our belt, Jewelry Retouchers has mastered the techniques to produce the best images each time. It’s time for us to share our silver jewelry photo retouching tips.
How to Retouch Silver Jewelry Photos
When editing photos of silver jewelry, we don’t aim to alter the piece’s appearance to the point of misrepresentation. Rather, the goal is to make the jewelry more realistic or closer to how it would look to the naked eye. Here are the steps to retouching silver jewelry images using Photoshop:
1. Setting Up the Image
Start by loading the image into Photoshop. You may increase the resolution of the image to 300 megapixels. This way, it will be easier to see small details. You may also resize and re-center the image at this point.
2. Background Mapping
Most jewelry photos have a white background because it keeps the focus on the jewelry. They also reflect light well so the jewelry looks more captivating in the pictures. The white background, however, needs to be flawless.
To start, you need to map the background. These are the steps to background mapping:
- After loading the image, set the Pen tool’s feather radius to 1-1.5 pixels.
- Zoom in to the image at 200% to 300% to see the details more accurately.
- With the Pen tool, clip the outline of the jewelry as close as possible.
- Create a new path and label it accordingly.
- Then create a new Layer. This should remove the original background.
- Create another layer and fill it with white. Move this layer under the clipped image layer to create an endless white background.
- Then, select the Pen tool again and create a separate path for the gems and the metals. This will allow you to edit them separately later on.
3. Removing Imperfections
While photographers do their best to keep jewelry free of dust and fingerprints, a few may still end up in the photos. But don’t worry because you can easily remove these with the Spot Healing Brush tool and Patch tool.
The Healing Brush tool automatically applies the colors and textures in the surrounding area onto the selected spot. It removes imperfections while creating a soft transition throughout the surface.
The patch tool works similarly. It uses the surface from a selected source to cover the problem spot.
4. Correcting Reflections
Reflections are a major concern in silver jewelry photo editing.
Even with the best lighting and setup, unwanted reflections may still be visible on the reflective surface of silver jewelry. The ideal reflections bring out the shine of the silver.
In contrast, bad reflections, like reflections from lighting equipment, cameras, or sometimes even the photographer, often appear dark. They make the silver appear dull and flat.
You can erase bad reflections using the Brush tool or the Healing Brush Tool. However, if these tools cannot brighten the reflection, you may also opt to replace that area with an image of an ideal reflection. This last tip is usually used when editing the back shanks of rings.
5. Color Correction
Silver jewelry may appear yellowish or dark, so a little color correcting is necessary. Color correction helps achieve the piece of jewelry’s accurate color. This way, customers get realistic expectations as they browse your website.
Color correction also makes the photos more vibrant.
To get the right color and sheen for silver, play with the hue and saturation settings. Tweak these areas to play up or remove certain colors in the image. For example, if the silver jewelry appears yellowish, you can turn up its opposite color, blue, until the yellow disappears.
You can also adjust the contrast and brightness of the photo. These help the silver look more polished.
6. Retouching Gemstones and Diamonds
Silver jewelry often comes with gemstones and diamonds, which cannot be ignored when you edit jewelry photos. A good silver jewelry photo enhancement job doesn’t leave out any details, simply because professionals make sure that all elements of the piece are highlighted.
After all, gemstones and diamonds are the centerpieces of jewelry. You want them to have sparkle but not glare.
Before you edit the gemstones or diamonds, make sure to mask the metal area so that they are not affected by the edits you make on the metals.
Adjust the Levels to bring out shadows and highlights. Doing so should accentuate the cuts and reflections brighter and thus make them more eye-catching.
Pay attention to the colors the stones reflect as well. To increase their vibrancy, you may tweak the brightness, contrast, hue, or saturation.
You may also manually add sparkles and paint in color reflections if you feel that the stones need more to stand out.
7. Adding the Shadow
Background mapping removed the natural shadows from the photo, making the jewelry look like it’s floating. Some clients prefer having shadows added to make the photos look more realistic.
You can either draw a shadow using the Brush tool. After drawing the shadow where you want it, set the layer to multiply. Then, lower the opacity until you’re satisfied with the darkness of the shadow.
An alternative is to add an image of a shadow. For this, you’ll need to create a new layer.
Make sure that the shadow matches the shape and position of the jewelry you’re editing. If the shadow is misplaced or misshapen, this can be distracting to the customer.
Adding a shadow is one of the ways to make silver jewelry photography retouching look realistic.
Why Hire a Silver Jewelry Photo Retouching Company?
At a time when the jewelry market is extremely competitive, brands need to present their products in the best light possible. Customers need an accurate image of the products through which they can also inspect the finer details.
When you have already invested in a professional photographer to take high-quality photos of your collection, it’s only wise to complement that with someone who really knows how to retouch jewelry with Photoshop.
This is crucial for brands that want to stand out from the competition as one that values quality.
Ultimately, retouching photos is not just about eliminating imperfections. It’s also about improving the overall composition of the image so that it looks polished. To edit a jewelry photo well, you need an eye for photography.
Let Jewelry Retouchers Edit Your Jewelry Photos
With all the craftsmanship that goes into each piece of jewelry you sell, they deserve quality silver jewelry image editing. Indeed, the editing process involves various subjective elements that can only be learned through experience.
With Jewelry Retouchers’ jewelry photo retouch services, you don’t need to fumble around in Photoshop. You can trust an expert to bring out the best in each image.
Send us a message today to learn more about our services.
