Jewelry Photo Editing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Jewelry business is one of the most popular things to start and sell online. But like any e-Commerce venture, it has its own considerations and complications. Hands-on creatives and marketing skills might be vital factors to make a jewelry business thrive. However, your efforts will be useless if you won’t invest in good jewelry photography services.

We all know that online businesses rely on visuals. This means that you need to upload high-quality photos to attract customers and make them purchase your product. But good photography isn’t just about lighting, equipment, style, and product presentation. Post-production finishes all the magic and is the key ingredient for your masterpiece. However, bad editing can cause businesses to lose leads and sales.

Want to give your clients full satisfaction and help them top the jewelry business industry? Learn these easy steps to jewelry photo editing.

Step 1: Gather the best photos.

Saving all the raw shots doesn’t mean you’re going to edit them all. This might be an unpopular practice, but sorting your pictures must always be the first step in post-processing.

Before you edit your jewelry photos, make sure to choose the best ones, and provide different angles for each product. You don’t want to use up all your time editing photos that won’t be uploaded anyway.

Pro Tip: Even after choosing the best jewelry pictures, save the rejected raw photos for a while. The client might ask for more shots for a specific product, so it’s always better to have a back-up.

Step 2: Decide on the editing software to use.

The top three editing software that most graphic artists use are Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom – all from Adobe. These platforms are proven to have advanced editing tools that will bring magic to your photos.

Photoshop is pretty much the general type. You can edit almost anything on this software – from graphic layouts to collateral and other advertising materials. Illustrator is more useful if you want to create vector designs and infographics. On the other hand, Lightroom is the best tool for portrait and wedding photos, especially if you want to instantly beautify the face and add filters.

As for jewelry photos, Photoshop would be the ideal tool. You can perform all the tricks on this software, including color correction, unsharpening, background editing, and photo manipulation. If you want to add filters, you may look for presets on Lightroom.

Step 3: Remove dust and scratches.

Before you perform a thorough retouching, it’s necessary to polish your jewelry subject first. Jewelry accessories can’t be picture-perfect – but they have to look elegant in photos. Unfortunately, dust and scratches can lessen your jewelry’s elegance.

To remove unwanted spots and defects, you’ll need to use the Spot Healing Brush tool. This is one of the most common Photoshop brush retouching tools. To do spot healing, simply click the tool, select the brush size, and click-and-drag on the areas you want to fix. Now your jewelry subject is all polished and presentable.

Step 4: Apply duplication.

Duplication is essential for jewelry accessories that need pairing, such as earrings. However, most photographers would duplicate all jewelry items so the frame won’t be too empty. The technique is also necessary for consistency.

The best tool for duplication is the Rectangular Marquee tool. Using Marquee, just select the jewelry product, edit>copy, then edit>paste. After your subject is duplicated, just place the new one wherever you want it in the frame. Lastly, remember to have a white background or completely remove it when doing this technique for better results.

Step 5: Smudge for a gradient shine.

As mentioned above, jewelry photos must be polished to look attractive and elegant. But removing dust and scratches doesn’t guarantee a gradient shine. Hence, you need another tool for that.

Photoshop’s smudge tool (brush-based) can do all the magic and give your pearls or earrings a gradient shine. Simply click the tool, select a brush size, and click-and-drag on the area you want to smudge. If you can notice, it’s pretty much similar to step 3, except that it will give your subject a more professional look — one that’s good for print ads and website homepages.

Step 6: Fix specific parts of the photo.

There are instances that jewelry stones don’t shine equally on the photo. Say one stone doesn’t get enough light while others are shining so brightly. This might seem unnoticeable, but a meticulous client doesn’t want any dull details on the photo. Hence, you need to fix the unlighted stones.

To do this, you can use the Clone Stamp tool. It will let you copy one of the stones with natural shine and place it over the stone that doesn’t sparkle. Just select the Clone Stamp tool, choose your brush size, click Alt, and click on the area you want to copy. Then, release Alt and click on the area you want to be fixed.

Step 7: Make colors pop.

Now you’re done with polishing, shining, and fixing defects. Let’s go to the most critical part of jewelry photo editing — color correction. This technique is more than just adjusting colors literally to achieve a realistic look. Color correction involves brightness/contrast enhancement and hue/saturation adjustment.

Brightness, as the name indicates, brightens images. Contrast makes colors richer and creates a balance between lighter and darker areas. Brightening can often cause you to lose details, and contrast can fix the imbalance. To perform this technique, head to Photoshop’s top menu and then go to Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. Simply move the sliders around to get the desired effect.

Moreover, hue and saturation adjustment can change the colors of an image. This is especially helpful if you have metal jewelry with different stone colors. Instead of photographing them all, just take one shot and use the hue/saturation tool after. You can change orange to yellow or blue to green.

To adjust hue and saturation, head to the top menu, and then go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Select the color you want to change and move the sliders around to get the desired color. The hue slider changes colors, while the saturation slider makes the colors deeper and richer.

Step 8: Lighten specific parts of the image.

You might wonder why this step is included when brightness is already tackled previously. Well, the brightness adjustment in the preceding step corrects the entire jewelry photo’s appearance, while this one is more in-depth.

You may use the Dodge tool on Photoshop, and it’s brush-based. This tool will let you control which specific areas of the image get brighter. While we can lighten subject parts, we can also darken them. Proceed in the next step to know how.

Step 9: Darken specific parts of the image.

The opposite for Dodge is the Burn tool. It lets you darken specific areas of the image. For example, you have a jewelry piece with complicated designs. You can darken some parts, such as the circular line, twisted edge, or the little circles in the middle. This is to create more depth, emphasis, and definition to your jewelry design without ruining the whole picture.

To use the Burn tool, just select it and choose a brush size. You can now start painting in the area you want to darken. The same process goes for the Dodge tool if you want to lighten some parts of your jewelry image.

Step 10: Add some filters.

You may skip this step if you feel that your jewelry image is already good-looking. However, some clients may request filter addition, especially if the images will be used for online and social media promotions.

Filters are now hot trends, not only for bloggers and influencers’ content. They’re also applicable for e-Commerce, especially if you want to add drama to your photos. For jewelry photos, you may use a more natural-looking filter – one that makes the colors vivid and sharpens your image. Filters are also useful for branding, and you can select the best ones on Lightroom.

Conclusion

Jewelry photos need thorough retouching to attract customers and convince them to buy your product. Luckily, Photoshop allows you to do all the tricks with ease. There are still many software tools that you can use for post-processing, but the ones mentioned in this guide are the basic and most popular ones.

Remember, the goal in all photography editing is to please the client and please them even more when you’re able to increase their sales through top-notch editing skills. We hope this post helped you and start doing the magic now.