Photo Retouching Tips in Photoshop for Jewelry
It is a well-known fact that the fashion and jewelry industry highly depends on visual charm. It definitely works when something is appealing and displayed at its best. Otherwise, it just doesn’t. And for that, Photoshop is a blessing to this domain. It is used to remove imperfections and also to display a product to the best of its elegance.
The brightness, tone, contrast settings and many other features are accustomed to make every image look perfect in every aspect. But, the entire process involved in jewelry retouching techniques are not easy to accomplish. An ultra-careful approach must be followed while retouching every piece of jewelry, no matter what its size is.
Adobe Photoshop is a very useful application when it comes to retouching of an image. Here are some tips for jewelry photography editing that you can use to create a high quality jewelry image.
1. Adjust image’s color balance
An image with a balanced color looks much more appealing. The color balance option in Photoshop helps to adjust color of the image.
One can choose which color to be treated as the background of the image or to be highlighted.
2. Balance the brightness or contrast
You can make your image more eye catching by applying these settings. Photoshop does a wonderful job when it comes to adjusting the brightness and contrast of an image.
One also gets the option to create an adjustment layer and work according to it.
3. Create natural shadow effects
It is necessary to make a natural shadow effect, when you edit jewelry images. It will enhance the look of the image.
It is important to give a touch to unwanted shadows by using the various shadow effects. It will add depth to the subject.
These natural shadows attract the attention of shoppers to an intended area. As a result, it will lead to an increment in sales.
4. Jewelry Image Resolution Upsizing
When it comes to images of jewelry, every piece of detail should be clearly visible. But not all the images are of the exact size as we need them to be. So, it’s important to resize the image as per the requirement. But, when we enlarge an image, the resolution of the image decreases.
Thankfully, Photoshop has the feature that will solve the problem. All you need to do is open the image in Photoshop. Select ‘Image size’ from the Image menu.
To keep every detail selected, opt ‘Preserve Details (Enlargement)’ option from the menu.The Preview window will give you a preview of the image with all changes done.
5. Level
Adjustment of exposure of the image is very important in case of jewelry image. This can be carried out by the use of adjustment layer. To do this, follow the steps:
- Open the image in Photoshop.
- From the menu bar, select Image.
- From the drop down menu, go to Adjustment -> Level.
- Click OK to apply the changes.
6. Remove unwanted spots and dusts
Unwanted spot removal is an important part of photography post processing. Creative and impressive visuals are very important in case of jewelry pieces. It is essential that the image doesn’t have any flaws in order to look attractive. Sometimes, the spots are not noticed when the product is being photographed.
But, when the image is processed, these spots are clearly visible. To remove them, Adobe Photoshop has several tools. Different Brush tools like Clone Stamp tool, Spot Healing Brush tool and Healing Brush tool are few such examples.
Jewelry retouching needs time and attention to create something that looks flawless and exquisite.
7. Utilize Unsharp Mask
The piece of jewelry sometimes has sharp edges because of stones or metals like Silver and Gold. In such cases, The Unsharp Mask tool is used in order to make the image look a little softer.
You can use this tool by selecting Filters -> Sharpen in the menu.
3 sliders will appear when you select this tool
- Amount
- Radius
- Threshold
These 3 tools are used to adjust the sharpness of the image effectively. This excellent retouching tool is offered by Adobe Photoshop.
8. Flexible Retouching on the basis of layers
You can edit jewelry photos in a perfect manner by the help of layers. Layers allows you to produce many retouched versions of the image. You can apply various filters, clone images and generate many versions of the image easily without damaging the original image.
You can also adjust selected portions of the image as per requirement. This offers great flexibility while retouching the image. You can analyze various looks if you are confused about a particular aesthetic. You can select the one that best suits your requirements.
9. Neutralize effects due to camera shake
It is possible that a photographer’s hands can shake while capturing images of jewelry with a camera. It can be minimized by using the ‘Handheld camera stabilizers’ feature. It reduces the distortion to a great extent. Also, hazy /dark blurred patches can appear if the image is not captured in natural/sufficient light.
Insufficient clarity in the image might reduce the proper sales of the jewelry. To reduce the blur induced due to shaking or low light, you can retouch the image. They can be easily polished by the ‘Shake Reduction’ option available in the Filter Menu.
Actions in Photoshop
You can experiment with various actions in Photoshop. It is possible that you might run short of time to retouch a jewelry image. In Photoshop, there are predefined tasks available that fixes common problems we face during retouching. Issues related to image softening, overexposure, or adding effects to an ordinary image can be fixed in a single click. Just use the “Photoshop Actions” and you would be able to finish your task.
The main reason why retouching is done in jewelry images is to remove all the flaws that impact the picture of the jewelry negatively. Another reason is to make the picture look better so that it becomes more useful for commercial purposes that may lead to increase in sales.
