"Hi-End photo processing of jewelry and other small items"

Today our guest is a very big and at the same time difficult topic - processing photos of jewelry, watches and other small items. Many friends and colleagues have been waiting for this material, and I am finally happy to present this article to you.

Instead of an introduction

In the era of the film process, small subject photography, including jewelry, watches, museum exhibits, etc. was complicated by the fact that post-processing (retouching) was reduced mainly to the manual removal of the largest defects directly on the film or photographic plate, or to the processing of a paper print with a pencil, ink, and other familiar artist's tools.

Then the photographer had to devote much more time to shooting, to take care of every detail, about the impeccable uniformity and purity of the background, and besides, he had no way to control the result during the shooting (except with the help of a test exposure of the frame on a polaroid).

In the digital age, the work of subject and catalog photographers has become easier, since they have two powerful tools in their hands: a camera that allows you to see the result directly during shooting and a rich arsenal of graphic editors with an extensive set of plug-ins for retouching, color correction and quick clipping.

What tasks should jewelry photo processing solve?

1. Selection and conversion of raw RAW files

2. Elimination of product defects and noise
Jewelry is small in reality, while in a practical application, photographs can be printed on very large formats, where even the slightest defects and technological features (scratches, dents, lack of paint, etc.) can look terrifying. Matrix noise is also superimposed on the image, especially in the shadows.

3. Editing of defective reflexes and their completion if necessary.
When shooting, it is not always possible to arrange the light so that the reflections on the product have an ideal shape. It is often easier to bring them to mind already in processing than to spend shooting time. Often, individual reflexes are generally drawn completely from scratch where they were not there at all when shooting.

4. Improvement of the black and white pattern.
During processing, a special gloss is achieved by careful processing and improvement of light and shade contrasts, the addition of light and dark spots.

5. Processing of precious stones.
As a rule, the customer makes special demands on the quality of the workmanship of precious stones in the products. Even if the proper play of light is achieved when shooting, things cannot do without processing - somewhere you need to increase the sharpness, somewhere to raise the contrast, somewhere to add a color "spectrum".

6. Color correction.
Usually, all frames need color correction, not only because of inaccuracies in the color rendering of the camera, but also due to the fact that the metal of the product itself may have color unevenness or not correspond to the customer’s ideas about the ideal.

7. Image sharpening and local contrast enhancement.
Shooting technology involves the use of large aperture numbers in order to put the product in the depth of field. in this case, even on cameras with a fairly large pixel (for example, Canon 5D), the actual aperture at which the product fits into the depth of field is already much higher than the limit at which diffraction does not impair sharpness (it is useful to read an article by Vladimir Medvedev about diffraction). Usually shooting jewelry is carried out at apertures from 16 to 26 (for 35 mm format), at these values, the frame can lose up to half of its real resolution due to diffraction. Of course, this shortcoming must be somehow filled.

8. Clipping and staging on the background.
As a rule, the customer prefers to be able to later independently place the products on any background he needs. But even if the change of the substrate is not needed in the future, the background that was originally available usually needs to be improved (re-uploaded, eliminated defects, debris, etc.), which naturally cannot do without clipping. Also, clipping is necessary to separate the object and reflect it, if the shooting was carried out on a mirror background.

9. Optimization for the web.
Most often, the main scope of captured images is the Internet, and most often the customer asks to optimize the received frames for a specific web platform, taking into account its requirements (image size and graphic format).

Selection and conversion of raw RAW files

Usually, immediately after shooting, the photographer sends the customer a preview of raw frames so that the customer selects the angles he likes and the frames with the most successful light-shadow pattern and the location of reflections from his point of view.

My practice shows that the most convenient workflow in this case is provided by Adobe Lightroom. The filmed material is imported into the program, where the initial rejection of frames that are completely unsuccessful technically or in lighting is carried out. It is useful to save the conversion settings once as a preset if you are shooting with the same equipment and in approximately the same conditions.

It is important to set the correct white balance for the entire series of frames (for which it is convenient to use a separate frame with a gray card, on which the WB is set with an eyedropper.

At the stage of generating a preview gallery, it seems appropriate for the customer to use such converter settings that will give the most contrasting, “tasty” picture. In this sense, it is worth playing around with the Clarity and Sharpness settings and choosing the most contrasting camera profile.

All frames are cropped according to the product (along the way, turning the frames to align the vertical horizon).

The selected images are added to the Quick collection, on the basis of which a gallery is generated using the Web module (I usually use a standard html gallery with slightly modified colors). It makes sense to set the sharpness settings for large images in the gallery to the maximum, and for jpeg use compression levels not lower than 80.

After generating and saving the gallery to disk, it is uploaded to the hosting or sent in an archive to the customer's email.

After the customer makes his own selection, the frames selected by him are marked with flags, after which their settings are changed to more “sparing” ones: a less contrasting camera profile is selected, USM is either turned off completely or set to a small value, since sharpness will be added later and most likely selectively.

Selected frames are converted to TIFF or PSD format with sRGB profile. The issue of image bitness deserves a separate discussion, but from my own experience I can say that if there is no strong lightening in the processing plans, then 8 bits will be enough, especially since possible posterization will be smoothed out by subsequent retouching anyway. However, a 16-bit process can also be used, given only that the files will be larger and the applied filters will be almost twice as slow.

Immediately after the conversion, you need to collect all the additional frames in one PSD file on layers. Let's say, if we made a separate frame for diamonds, then this frame needs to be dragged into the main working image.

Elimination of product defects and noise

I usually start jewelry processing with the removal of high-frequency (fine-grained) defects - digital noise, fine dust, a network of scratches that usually cover products made of soft and easily scratched gold and silver, and especially pearl inserts.

To do this, it is convenient to use some good noise reduction. I have been using Topaz Denoise for a long time - its algorithm is ideal for cleaning smooth metal surfaces. We make the first noise reduction pass with sparing settings so as not to kill details.
The screenshots show the 3rd version of the program, but now a radically improved version number 5 is available, which I recommend for use.

The second pass with the same noise reduction is done with very aggressive settings, but already on a separate layer. You can see how Topaz removes even fairly large scratches and defects.

After applying the filter, create a mask of the Hide all layer and develop the cleaned image on homogeneous areas, without touching the areas where you want to keep the detail.

We slam.

Similarly, every time on a new layer with a mask, we go over the product with the Median and Surface blur filters. The first of them allows you to smooth out rough bumps and “chewed” reflexes. The median radius actually determines the size of the defects that will be smoothed out.

The second filter (Surface blur) with proper settings eliminates bumps and spots in homogeneous areas.

With such pre-filtering, you should not overdo it and lick the product according to the principle of plastic fiction. It will not be possible to return the lost texture later, but you can always filter out irregularities or defects at any stage of processing.

After applying all these filters, small scratches and defects will go away, small uneven reflections will be smoothed out, as well as spots on homogeneous surfaces.

Editing defective reflections

However, most often there is a need for a radical change in the shape of individual reflections, in some cases, editing the shape of the product itself.

This is where a wonderful tool comes to the rescue - Liquify. Using brushes of different diameters, we straighten large details first, and then small ones. Liquify even allows you to actually draw on the reflexes, stretching them to the desired length, shaping them like clay.

Liquify is a very powerful tool with a lot of potential, so it's always worth taking another look at the product before hitting OK.

After that, it's time for the most painstaking stage - manual retouching using the Brush, Spot healing brush and Stamp tools.

In addition to removing rare remaining defects, you need to connect all the taste and artistic flair, as well as hand drawing skills, to the work. As practice shows, the natural and high-quality completion of the missing strokes, reflections, shadows and highlights is only possible for a specialist who has a good idea of ​​​​chiaroscuro and geometry of the volume of an object in its flat display, and the skills of a confident freehand drawing.

In some cases, you can do without such refinement, but it brings the result of the work to a qualitatively different level and quite unambiguously characterizes the level of professionalism. As a rule, it is a high-quality hand-retouched product that creates the impression of a “delicious” and moderately idealized frame, which the customer likes so much.

In the process of manual retouching, places on the product that contained traces of mounting are also usually painted over (supports, drops of hot-melt adhesive and jewelry mastic, with which the product was attached to the background).

After that, it can be useful to make another pass with the Surface blur filter, which will smooth out the natural irregularities of hand-hatching.

Improvement of the black and white pattern

When I work, most often the next step is to evaluate the product for the need to finish drawing individual light spots, sharp highlights and at the same time add contrast to individual areas of shadows. These operations are carried out using the Dodge tool and Burn tool, with the Protect tones option turned off. Bold and confident strokes are added to bright areas and dots in reflections to make them more alive (Dodge tool in Highlights mode), and shadows are made more contrast (Burn tool in Shadows mode). In some solid-color flat reflexes, you can use these two tools to create gradients and soft-edged highlights that mimic shooting with diffuse panels.

Gemstone Processing

Now let's move on to the processing of precious stones. Here, our main goal is to make them play on their own, as well as stand out from the background of the whole product.
The stones need to be placed on a separate layer - clipping is done in any convenient way, but in the case of stones, it is most convenient to use the Quick mask.

It's rarely enough to just add contrast with curves, go through the Dodge tool and Burn tool and sharpen it up.

It is very difficult to make "play" a scattering of small diamonds or cubic zirkonia, which in large quantities are usually mounted directly into the metal, without creating a faceted nest that would reflect the incident light from the inside through the stone, causing it to shimmer. In this case, you should use the USM tool with a large radius, which will significantly increase the local contrast, and after that, if possible, brighten the stones from the background metal, brightening the stones with curves, and darkening the metal below them locally using the Burn tool in the Miditones or Highlights mode.

The rainbow play of diamonds is generally a separate issue for both shooting and processing. While this effect may seem obvious when viewing the product in person, it is quite difficult to get it on film, although many photographers use LED panels. Some photographers also have know-how that is so carefully guarded as a professional secret, but quite easily revealed if one carefully examines their work. For example, if you carefully study the works of Sergey Pryanechnikov, it becomes obvious that when shooting stones in a separate frame, he uses either two colored light sources or a pair of blue and yellow-orange reflectors, which, illuminating the stone from different sides and mixing in its faces, create rainbow spectrum impression.

For exclusive expensive shootings, this approach naturally makes sense, but with cheaper and mass shootings, an additional shot on rocks can double the shooting time, which is unacceptable. What to do if in this case the customer still wants to see at least some play of light in diamonds?

there are two proven methods that are designed to more or less believably simulate the color of stones in the most characteristic blue-yellow colors.
You can apply a Gradient map effect to the layer with stones, where the colors will alternate over the entire range of brightness, or you can create the same effect using curves. The transparency of the colored layer is set to taste, and the blending mode can be set to color so that the brightness of the original layer remains unchanged. Sometimes it is advisable to add only individual color blotches. For example, the brightest highlights look quite natural, slightly tinted yellow, and some places in the shadows tinted blue.

Whatever method we choose, the basic principle of creating a color game of stones is to collide two gamuts of contrasting colors - blue-blue and yellow-orange.

You can try to do this with the help of these exotic curves:

Color correction

As part of the conversation about color correction, the processing of pearls, which are part of the product, deserves a separate discussion.

Pearls are a natural material that can come in hundreds of different standardized and non-standardized shades. And usually the seller is very sensitive to how accurately the color of pearls will be reproduced in the photo. It would seem that what is the difficulty - they put a gray card, poked it with a pipette when converting RAW - and that's it. But we must take into account that, say, white pearls, which we will receive in the photo and how the customer and the client imagine it, are two big differences. As a rule, when shooting, pearls come out too dark, without a peculiar effect of internal glow, which, according to the customer, usually just distinguishes natural pearls from artificial ones (the latter visually does not have this internal glow and plays only with a surface layer).

It is advisable to put pearls on a separate layer and leave them there, unlike precious stones, avoiding sharpening them, since after USM pearls can significantly lose volume, become heavier, or even turn into cheap plastic.

The next important step is metal color correction.

Why do you need color correction when processing jewelry? Wouldn't it be easier to use a gray card at the shooting stage, then take the white balance from it and actually get the exact real color of the filmed product?

The fact is that here again we are faced with the same problem of a jewelry photographer, which forces him to retouch for hours - the actual imperfection of the products and the stereotypes of the customer.

In my work, I came across half a dozen different colors of gold, each of which was clearly distinguished from the other by the client.
Dark yellow gold (it is also "Arabian gold", has a rather poisonous saturated color), light yellow gold, dark pink gold (close in color to copper), light pink gold, white gold.

Separately, there is silver, which can also have a variety of shades.

The main problem is that the color that the customer wants to see is usually different from the color that the product itself has. It happens that the customer wants the dark yellow gold to retain its original saturated and somewhat poisonous hue, and it also happens that this color has to be lightened and its saturation reduced, usually in cases where the customer associates such shades with cheap low-grade Arabic gold.

Rose gold also often causes controversy, as some people like a pronounced copper hue, someone prefers soft pink. It is the same story with white gold and silver, and you also need to take into account that if white gold is most often completely colorless, then silver almost always has a slight brownish-yellowish tint, but whether to keep this tint or not depends solely on the opinion of the customer.

It often happens that the same products from different metals are provided for shooting. Let's say these are white yellow gold items. Obviously, if you follow the path of least resistance, it is easier to remove and retouch the yellow-gold item, and get the white-gold item by discoloration. Usually this point is discussed with the customer and in 90% of cases there are no problems. On the contrary, the customer often prefers uniformly removed products if they have the same design. This point is especially relevant when working with wristwatches, when a series of dozens of models with different metal colors, different bracelets and dials can be made on the basis of one case.

Based on my experience, I will say that special attention should be paid to the repainting of gold into silver and vice versa. In the first case, it is most often impossible to simply discolor the metal through Desaturate, since this changes the ratio of shades, and most importantly, the customer most often perceives completely discolored products extremely negatively. Here it is advisable to repaint in two stages: first, completely discolor through the Channel mixer, selecting such a ratio of channels that will achieve the optimal overall brightness of the product, and then add a small amount of color so that the product has a natural look. I usually do this with a Blue Curve, adding a little bit of yellow to the highlights and blue to the shadows. It is convenient to do this on a separate layer, then to weaken or enhance the effect to taste.

Before starting work on products, you should discuss colors with the customer, it would be nice if the customer himself can provide color samples. Getting into them is already exclusively a matter of technology. You can do color correction by eye, you can do it channel by channel, focusing on brightness, you can use the wonderful Match color tool (which, by the way, is extremely effective for repainting gold to silver and vice versa).

Image sharpening and local contrast enhancement

After the stones and pearls are placed on separate layers, and all elements are color-corrected, you can begin to enhance the local contrast to give the product that very gloss that customers usually call a “delicious picture”. From the point of view of a “conscientious photographer”, such processing is, in a sense, a dishonest technique that often kills plasticity and volume, but it is very effective for advertising and especially catalog shooting, when frames go to an online store in the form of small previews.

What is local contrast? This is the difference between the lightest and darkest point in the image in some small local area. Increasing the local contrast makes the image ringingly sharp even on a small preview jpeg - and often the customer evaluates the work done by this criterion.

Despite the fact that there is a rich arsenal of plugins, for example, Topaz Detail, over the years of working with jewelry, I came up with a universal algorithm for enhancing local contrast using one Photoshop. Based on this algorithm, an action was made, consisting of several stages.
First of all, the original layer is duplicated, and all further actions are performed only with the duplicate, so that later you can enhance or weaken the effect by changing the transparency of this layer.

In the second step, curves are applied to the layer, where the extreme black point is slightly shifted into highlights (black turned into dark gray), and the white point opposite is shifted into shadow, and white becomes light gray. This is necessary because the following steps tend to narrow the dynamic range of the image, making the shadows darker and the highlights lighter, which exacerbates blowouts and blackouts.

The local contrast enhancement itself is performed using the USM filter in three stages, with a gradual decrease in the radius and an increase in the strength of the effect. For 21-megapixel frames from the 5D MkII camera, I use USM the first time with a radius of 25-30 and a strength of 20 (large details become much more contrast), the second time with a radius of 5-7 and a strength of 20-30 (smaller details and textures are enhanced) and finally the third time - with a radius of 1-1.5 and a strength of up to 100 (and this is actually already a banal sharp, which sharpens the contours and enhances fine textures).

After applying such an algorithm, it may seem to a beginner in product photography that the image has a clear oversharp, and he will be partly right. But experience shows that during subsequent printing by any means, or, even more so, when optimizing an image for the web, there is never too much sharpness, and most often after resizing, you even need to reapply USM with a small radius.

Clipping and staging

After increasing the local contrast, you can do perhaps the most tedious action - clipping.

Without exception, to all photographers who make bulk orders on the subject, I wholeheartedly advise you to find a specially trained partner who would only deal with clipping. In the market of design services, this work is, in principle, inexpensive (maximum - 50 rubles per frame, if this is not a portrait where you need to poison your hair). With an average price for a processed frame of jewelry 400-500 rubles. clipping for 50 r. Seems like a bargain that saves both time and nerves. Find a retired technical designer (retired, on maternity leave, freelancing - underline as necessary), who would be in touch during the working day, send him a file and get a trimmed product in half an hour. And spend this time on retouching the next frame. Think - 50 rubles multiplied by 10 products is only 500 r, while for you it will actually be saving almost a whole working day (taking into account the fact that the person on the clipping ate the dog and works, in principle, faster than you).

But if you still decide to work completely on your own, then the poisoning of jewelry and watches should be done approximately according to this algorithm.
If the product does not bounce well from the background, then to facilitate the work it is useful to create an adjustment layer with curves, contrasting, brightening or darkening the image for best visibility.

Clipping is usually done with a pen, although individual elements (for example, pearls) are easier to clip with a round selection.
The process itself does not require detailed comments. But there are situations that confuse. For example, a product on a chain of a couple of hundred links. What to do in this case?

If the product is shot against a contrasting background, then you can resort to creating a selection from a channel or using the Magic wand. But what if the chain practically merges with the background?

Trimming each link separately is not an option. No customer will pay you a working day spent on this.
But for thinking people there is always a way out. You can take only a small segment of the chain, consisting of 5-7 rings, trim it and cut it off on both sides so that two such segments fit together seamlessly. We will get a blank from which we can then make a chain segment of any desired length and then bend it using transform -> warp to give any desired shape.

I have several of these blanks in my arsenal, which I use to create chains where clipping would be too laborious:

After the clipping is completed, the created selection can be finalized using the Refine selection tool, removing the remnants of white or dark outlines or smoothing out bumps. The resulting selection can be saved as an alpha channel, or you can immediately put the product on a separate layer if you are sure that the clipping shape will not have to be changed later.

Separately, the reflection of the product is clipped. Here you can "cheat" a little, i.e. apply for example a linear lasso and subsequent smoothing of the selection - anyway, later the reflection will either be blurry, or its transparency will be significantly reduced.

When working with reflection, you can separately show your imagination - duplicate the layer and blur bright areas to give a glow effect, experiment with layer blending modes:

After the desired background is placed, the size is reduced to the desired by the customer, the final sharp and Save for Web. I think that these stages do not need to be described in detail.

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Jewelry retouching is aimed at adding shine to stones, facets, as well as darkening colored stones and brightening diamonds and cubic zirkonia. You can perform such retouching using adjustment layers that are responsible for shadows and lights.

Open the original image (example). In this tutorial, I used a clipart of a jewel because of the good resolution, so that the smallest details of processing can be seen. A background layer has been created below the clip art layer. Since clipart was taken for work, I had to correct such a nuance as increased sharpness at the edges of the image. For correction, you should make a duplicate layer with clipart. Apply a slight blur to the original clip art layer.

Add a layer mask to the duplicate layer with clipart and use a soft black brush with a small opacity to slightly paint over the edges, making them less clear and sharp.

The play of stones, that is, the presence of brighter and less bright tones, can be given with a Black - White adjustment layer. Distribute the content of primary colors in the dialog box.

Change the layer blending mode to “Screen”, fill the layer mask with black and in the layer mask with a soft type black brush with opacity 50-80% show several sections of the adjustment layer. Only after this manipulation, you can adjust the parameters of the adjustment layer so that the final version of the settings corresponds to their application to the image.

To give brightness and shine to white stones: diamonds, cubic zirkonia and others, apply the Brightness / Contrast adjustment layer.

Also, the layer-mask of the adjustment layer itself is filled in, individual sections appear and the data of the adjustment layer is adjusted.

Next, darken individual sections of colored stones. Create a new layer on top of all layers. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light. With a soft black brush, paint over the areas of the stones where they should be more saturated and dark.

Increase the shine and light with a Levels adjustment layer.

Fill the layer mask, reveal some areas and adjust the layer settings.

We add saturation to the colored stones with the adjustment layer "Juiciness". We also do the same with the adjustment layer, as with the previous layers.

Strengthen the darkening of colored stones and areas of yellow gold with a Curves adjustment layer. We do the same steps.

Create the illusion of a sparkle in the form of an asterisk. To do this, use the appropriate brush (example) by loading it into a set of brushes.

Select the desired brush from the list of brushes.

In a new layer, paint a white star with a brush.

Add shine to the star. Let's create a new layer. Fill with black. To this layer apply "Rendering" - Glare".

Change the blending mode of the flare layer to Screen. In the layers window, select two layers: a layer with a brush and a layer with a highlight: while holding down the Shift key, click first on one layer, then on the other, and reduce them with the “Scaling” function.

RESULT

When the processing is already completed, you can slightly tweak the layers responsible for lighting, that is, the Levels adjustment layer. As a result, its opacity has been slightly lowered.

Today our guest is a very big and at the same time difficult topic - processing photos of jewelry, watches and other small items. Many friends and colleagues have been waiting for this material, and I am finally happy to present this article to you.

INSTEAD OF INTRODUCTION

In the era of the film process, small subject photography, including jewelry, watches, museum exhibits, etc. was complicated by the fact that post-processing (retouching) was reduced mainly to the manual removal of the largest defects directly on the film or photographic plate, or to the processing of a paper print with a pencil, ink, and other familiar artist's tools.

Then the photographer had to devote much more time to shooting, to take care of every detail, about the impeccable uniformity and purity of the background, and besides, he had no way to control the result during the shooting (except with the help of a test exposure of the frame on a polaroid).

In the digital age, the work of subject and catalog photographers has become easier, since they have two powerful tools in their hands: a camera that allows you to see the result directly during shooting and a rich arsenal of graphic editors with an extensive set of plug-ins for retouching, color correction and quick clipping.

What tasks should jewelry photo processing solve?

1. Selection and conversion of raw RAW files

2. Elimination of product defects and noise

Jewelry is small in reality, while in a practical application, photographs can be printed on very large formats, where even the slightest defects and technological features (scratches, dents, lack of paint, etc.) can look terrifying. Matrix noise is also superimposed on the image, especially in the shadows.

3. Editing of defective reflexes and their completion if necessary.

When shooting, it is not always possible to arrange the light so that the reflections on the product have an ideal shape. It is often easier to bring them to mind already in processing than to spend shooting time. Often, individual reflexes are generally drawn completely from scratch where they were not there at all when shooting.

4. Improvement of the black and white pattern.

During processing, a special gloss is achieved by careful processing and improvement of light and shade contrasts, the addition of light and dark spots.

5. Processing of precious stones.

As a rule, the customer makes special demands on the quality of the workmanship of precious stones in the products. Even if the proper play of light is achieved when shooting, things cannot do without processing - somewhere you need to increase the sharpness, somewhere to raise the contrast, somewhere to add a color "spectrum".

6. Color correction.

Usually, all frames need color correction, not only because of inaccuracies in the color rendering of the camera, but also due to the fact that the metal of the product itself may have color unevenness or not correspond to the customer’s ideas about the ideal.

7. Image sharpening and local contrast enhancement.

Shooting technology involves the use of large aperture numbers in order to put the product in the depth of field. in this case, even on cameras with a fairly large pixel (for example, Canon 5D), the actual aperture at which the product fits into the depth of field is already much higher than the limit at which diffraction does not impair sharpness (it is useful to read an article by Vladimir Medvedev about diffraction). Usually shooting jewelry is carried out at apertures from 16 to 26 (for 35 mm format), at these values, the frame can lose up to half of its real resolution due to diffraction. Of course, this shortcoming must be somehow filled.

8. Clipping and staging on the background.

As a rule, the customer prefers to be able to later independently place the products on any background he needs. But even if the change of the substrate is not needed in the future, the background that was originally available usually needs to be improved (re-uploaded, eliminated defects, debris, etc.), which naturally cannot do without clipping. Also, clipping is necessary to separate the object and reflect it, if the shooting was carried out on a mirror background.

9. Optimization for the web.

Most often, the main scope of captured images is the Internet, and most often the customer asks to optimize the received frames for a specific web platform, taking into account its requirements (image size and graphic format).

Selection and conversion of raw RAW files

Usually, immediately after shooting, the photographer sends the customer a preview of raw frames so that the customer selects the angles he likes and the frames with the most successful light-shadow pattern and the location of reflections from his point of view.

My practice shows that the most convenient workflow in this case is provided by Adobe Lightroom. The filmed material is imported into the program, where the initial rejection of frames that are completely unsuccessful technically or in lighting is carried out. It is useful to save the conversion settings once as a preset if you are shooting with the same equipment and in approximately the same conditions.

It is important to set the correct white balance for the entire series of frames (for which it is convenient to use a separate frame with a gray card, on which the WB is set with an eyedropper.

At the stage of generating a preview gallery, it seems appropriate for the customer to use such converter settings that will give the most contrasting, “tasty” picture. In this sense, it is worth playing around with the Clarity and Sharpness settings and choosing the most contrasting camera profile.

All frames are cropped according to the product (along the way, turning the frames to align the vertical horizon).

The selected images are added to the Quick collection, on the basis of which a gallery is generated using the Web module (I usually use a standard html gallery with slightly modified colors). It makes sense to set the sharpness settings for large images in the gallery to the maximum, and for jpeg use compression levels not lower than 80.

After generating and saving the gallery to disk, it is uploaded to the hosting or sent in an archive to the customer's email.

After the customer makes his own selection, the frames selected by him are marked with flags, after which their settings are changed to more “sparing” ones: a less contrasting camera profile is selected, USM is either turned off completely or set to a small value, since sharpness will be added later and most likely selectively.

Selected frames are converted to TIFF or PSD format with sRGB profile. The issue of image bitness deserves a separate discussion, but from my own experience I can say that if there is no strong lightening in the processing plans, then 8 bits will be enough, especially since possible posterization will be smoothed out by subsequent retouching anyway. However, a 16-bit process can also be used, given only that the files will be larger and the applied filters will be almost twice as slow.

Immediately after the conversion, you need to collect all the additional frames in one PSD file on layers. Let's say, if we made a separate frame for diamonds, then this frame needs to be dragged into the main working image.

Elimination of product defects and noise

I usually start jewelry processing with the removal of high-frequency (fine-grained) defects - digital noise, fine dust, a network of scratches that usually cover products made of soft and easily scratched gold and silver, and especially pearl inserts.

To do this, it is convenient to use some good noise reduction. I have been using Topaz Denoise for a long time - its algorithm is ideal for cleaning smooth metal surfaces. We make the first noise reduction pass with sparing settings so as not to kill details.

The screenshots show the 3rd version of the program, but now a radically improved version number 5 is available, which I recommend for use.

The second pass with the same noise reduction is done with very aggressive settings, but already on a separate layer. You can see how Topaz removes even fairly large scratches and defects.

After applying the filter, create a mask of the Hide all layer and develop the cleaned image on homogeneous areas, without touching the areas where you want to keep the detail.

We slam.

Similarly, every time on a new layer with a mask, we go over the product with the Median and Surface blur filters. The first of them allows you to smooth out rough bumps and “chewed” reflexes. The median radius actually determines the size of the defects that will be smoothed out.

The second filter (Surface blur) with proper settings eliminates bumps and spots in homogeneous areas.

With such pre-filtering, you should not overdo it and lick the product according to the principle of plastic fiction. It will not be possible to return the lost texture later, but you can always filter out irregularities or defects at any stage of processing.

After applying all these filters, small scratches and defects will go away, small uneven reflections will be smoothed out, as well as spots on homogeneous surfaces.

Editing defective reflections

However, most often there is a need for a radical change in the shape of individual reflections, in some cases, editing the shape of the product itself.

This is where a wonderful tool comes to the rescue - Liquify. Using brushes of different diameters, we straighten large details first, and then small ones. Liquify even allows you to actually draw on the reflexes, stretching them to the desired length, shaping them like clay.

Liquify is a very powerful tool with a lot of potential, so it's always worth taking another look at the product before hitting OK.

After that, it's time for the most painstaking stage - manual retouching using the Brush, Spot healing brush and Stamp tools.

In addition to removing rare remaining defects, you need to connect all the taste and artistic flair, as well as hand drawing skills, to the work. As practice shows, the natural and high-quality completion of the missing strokes, reflections, shadows and highlights is only possible for a specialist who has a good idea of ​​​​chiaroscuro and geometry of the volume of an object in its flat display, and the skills of a confident freehand drawing.

In some cases, you can do without such refinement, but it brings the result of the work to a qualitatively different level and quite unambiguously characterizes the level of professionalism. As a rule, it is a high-quality hand-retouched product that creates the impression of a “delicious” and moderately idealized frame, which the customer likes so much.

In the process of manual retouching, places on the product that contained traces of mounting are also usually painted over (supports, drops of hot-melt adhesive and jewelry mastic, with which the product was attached to the background).

After that, it can be useful to make another pass with the Surface blur filter, which will smooth out the natural irregularities of hand-hatching.

Improvement of the black and white pattern

When I work, most often the next step is to evaluate the product for the need to finish drawing individual light spots, sharp highlights and at the same time add contrast to individual areas of shadows. These operations are carried out using the Dodge tool and Burn tool, with the Protect tones option turned off. Bold and confident strokes are added to bright areas and dots in reflections to make them more alive (Dodge tool in Highlights mode), and shadows are made more contrast (Burn tool in Shadows mode). In some solid-color flat reflexes, you can use these two tools to create gradients and soft-edged highlights that mimic shooting with diffuse panels.

Gemstone Processing

Now let's move on to the processing of precious stones. Here, our main goal is to make them play on their own, as well as stand out from the background of the whole product.

The stones need to be placed on a separate layer - clipping is done in any convenient way, but in the case of stones, it is most convenient to use the Quick mask.

It's rarely enough to just add contrast with curves, go through the Dodge tool and Burn tool and sharpen it up.

It is very difficult to make "play" a scattering of small diamonds or cubic zirkonia, which in large quantities are usually mounted directly into the metal, without creating a faceted nest that would reflect the incident light from the inside through the stone, causing it to shimmer. In this case, you should use the USM tool with a large radius, which will significantly increase the local contrast, and after that, if possible, brighten the stones from the background metal, brightening the stones with curves, and darkening the metal below them locally using the Burn tool in the Miditones or Highlights mode.

The rainbow play of diamonds is generally a separate issue for both shooting and processing. While this effect may seem obvious when viewing the product in person, it is quite difficult to get it on film, although many photographers use LED panels. Some photographers also have know-how that is so carefully guarded as a professional secret, but quite easily revealed if one carefully examines their work. For example, if you carefully study the work of Sergei Pryanechnikov, it becomes obvious that when shooting stones in a separate frame, he uses either two colored light sources or a pair of blue and yellow-orange reflectors, which, illuminating the stone from different sides and mixing in its faces, create rainbow spectrum impression.

For exclusive expensive shootings, this approach naturally makes sense, but with cheaper and mass shootings, an additional shot on rocks can double the shooting time, which is unacceptable. What to do if in this case the customer still wants to see at least some play of light in diamonds?

There are two proven methods that are designed to more or less believably simulate the color of stones in the most characteristic blue-yellow colors.

You can apply a Gradient map effect to the layer with stones, where the colors will alternate over the entire range of brightness, or you can create the same effect using curves. The transparency of the colored layer is set to taste, and the blending mode can be set to color so that the brightness of the original layer remains unchanged. Sometimes it is advisable to add only individual color blotches. For example, the brightest highlights look quite natural, slightly tinted yellow, and some places in the shadows tinted blue.

Whatever method we choose, the basic principle of creating a color game of stones is to collide two gamuts of contrasting colors - blue-blue and yellow-orange.

You can try to do this with the help of these exotic curves:

Color correction

As part of the conversation about color correction, the processing of pearls, which are part of the product, deserves a separate discussion.

Pearls are a natural material that can come in hundreds of different standardized and non-standardized shades. And usually the seller is very sensitive to how accurately the color of pearls will be reproduced in the photo. It would seem that what is the difficulty - they put a gray card, poked it with a pipette when converting RAW - and that's it. But we must take into account that, say, white pearls, which we will receive in the photo and how the customer and the client imagine it, are two big differences. As a rule, when shooting, pearls come out too dark, without a peculiar effect of internal glow, which, according to the customer, usually just distinguishes natural pearls from artificial ones (the latter visually does not have this internal glow and plays only with a surface layer).

It is advisable to put pearls on a separate layer and leave them there, unlike precious stones, avoiding sharpening them, since after USM pearls can significantly lose volume, become heavier, or even turn into cheap plastic.

The next important step is metal color correction.

Why do you need color correction when processing jewelry? Wouldn't it be easier to use a gray card at the shooting stage, then take the white balance from it and actually get the exact real color of the filmed product?

The fact is that here again we are faced with the same problem of a jewelry photographer, which forces him to retouch for hours - the actual imperfection of the products and the stereotypes of the customer.

In my work, I came across half a dozen different colors of gold, each of which was clearly distinguished from the other by the client.

Dark yellow gold (it is also "Arabian gold", has a rather poisonous saturated color), light yellow gold, dark pink gold (close in color to copper), light pink gold, white gold.

Separately, there is silver, which can also have a variety of shades.

The main problem is that the color that the customer wants to see is usually different from the color that the product itself has. It happens that the customer wants the dark yellow gold to retain its original saturated and somewhat poisonous hue, and it also happens that this color has to be lightened and its saturation reduced, usually in cases where the customer associates such shades with cheap low-grade Arabic gold.

Rose gold also often causes controversy, as some people like a pronounced copper hue, someone prefers soft pink. It is the same story with white gold and silver, and you also need to take into account that if white gold is most often completely colorless, then silver almost always has a slight brownish-yellowish tint, but whether to keep this tint or not depends solely on the opinion of the customer.

It often happens that the same products from different metals are provided for shooting. Let's say these are white yellow gold items. Obviously, if you follow the path of least resistance, it is easier to remove and retouch the yellow-gold item, and get the white-gold item by discoloration. Usually this point is discussed with the customer and in 90% of cases there are no problems. On the contrary, the customer often prefers uniformly removed products if they have the same design. This point is especially relevant when working with wristwatches, when a series of dozens of models with different metal colors, different bracelets and dials can be made on the basis of one case.

Based on my experience, I will say that special attention should be paid to the repainting of gold into silver and vice versa. In the first case, it is most often impossible to simply discolor the metal through Desaturate, since this changes the ratio of shades, and most importantly, the customer most often perceives completely discolored products extremely negatively. Here it is advisable to repaint in two stages: first, completely discolor through the Channel mixer, selecting such a ratio of channels that will achieve the optimal overall brightness of the product, and then add a small amount of color so that the product has a natural look. I usually do this with a Blue Curve, adding a little bit of yellow to the highlights and blue to the shadows. It is convenient to do this on a separate layer, then to weaken or enhance the effect to taste.

Before starting work on products, you should discuss colors with the customer, it would be nice if the customer himself can provide color samples. Getting into them is already exclusively a matter of technology. You can do color correction by eye, you can do it channel by channel, focusing on brightness, you can use the wonderful Match color tool (which, by the way, is extremely effective for repainting gold to silver and vice versa).

Image sharpening and local contrast enhancement

After the stones and pearls are placed on separate layers, and all elements are color-corrected, you can begin to enhance the local contrast to give the product that very gloss that customers usually call a “delicious picture”. From the point of view of a “conscientious photographer”, such processing is, in a sense, a dishonest technique that often kills plasticity and volume, but it is very effective for advertising and especially catalog shooting, when frames go to an online store in the form of small previews.

What is local contrast? This is the difference between the lightest and darkest point in the image in some small local area. Increasing the local contrast makes the image ringingly sharp even on a small preview jpeg - and often the customer evaluates the work done by this criterion.

Despite the fact that there is a rich arsenal of plugins, for example, Topaz Detail, over the years of working with jewelry, I came up with a universal algorithm for enhancing local contrast using one Photoshop. Based on this algorithm, an action was made, consisting of several stages.

First of all, the original layer is duplicated, and all further actions are performed only with the duplicate, so that later you can enhance or weaken the effect by changing the transparency of this layer.

In the second step, curves are applied to the layer, where the extreme black point is slightly shifted into highlights (black turned into dark gray), and the white point opposite is shifted into shadow, and white becomes light gray. This is necessary because the following steps tend to narrow the dynamic range of the image, making the shadows darker and the highlights lighter, which exacerbates blowouts and blackouts.

The local contrast enhancement itself is performed using the USM filter in three stages, with a gradual decrease in the radius and an increase in the strength of the effect. For 21-megapixel frames from the 5D MkII camera, I use USM the first time with a radius of 25-30 and a strength of 20 (large details become much more contrast), the second time with a radius of 5-7 and a strength of 20-30 (smaller details and textures are enhanced) and finally the third time - with a radius of 1-1.5 and a strength of up to 100 (and this is actually already a banal sharp, which sharpens the contours and enhances fine textures).

Clipping and staging

After increasing the local contrast, you can do perhaps the most tedious action - clipping.

Without exception, to all photographers who make bulk orders on the subject, I wholeheartedly advise you to find a specially trained partner who would only deal with clipping. In the market of design services, this work is, in principle, inexpensive (maximum - 50 rubles per frame, if this is not a portrait where you need to poison your hair). With an average price for a processed frame of jewelry 400-500 rubles. clipping for 50 r. Seems like a bargain that saves both time and nerves. Find a retired technical designer (retired, on maternity leave, freelancing - underline as necessary), who would be in touch during the working day, send him a file and get a trimmed product in half an hour. And spend this time on retouching the next frame. Think - 50 rubles multiplied by 10 products is only 500 r, while for you it will actually be saving almost a whole working day (taking into account the fact that the person on the clipping ate the dog and works, in principle, faster than you).

But if you still decide to work completely on your own, then the poisoning of jewelry and watches should be done approximately according to this algorithm.

If the product does not bounce well from the background, then to facilitate the work it is useful to create an adjustment layer with curves, contrasting, brightening or darkening the image for best visibility.

Clipping is usually done with a pen, although individual elements (for example, pearls) are easier to clip with a round selection.

The process itself does not require detailed comments. But there are situations that confuse. For example, a product on a chain of a couple of hundred links. What to do in this case?

If the product is shot against a contrasting background, then you can resort to creating a selection from a channel or using the Magic wand. But what if the chain practically merges with the background?

Trimming each link separately is not an option. No customer will pay you a working day spent on this.

But for thinking people there is always a way out. You can take only a small segment of the chain, consisting of 5-7 rings, trim it and cut it off on both sides so that two such segments fit together seamlessly. We will get a blank from which we can then make a chain segment of any desired length and then bend it using transform -> warp to give any desired shape.

I have several of these blanks in my arsenal, which I use to create chains where clipping would be too laborious:

After the clipping is completed, the created selection can be finalized using the Refine selection tool, removing the remnants of white or dark outlines or smoothing out bumps. The resulting selection can be saved as an alpha channel, or you can immediately put the product on a separate layer if you are sure that the clipping shape will not have to be changed later.

Separately, the reflection of the product is clipped. Here you can "cheat" a little, i.e. apply for example a linear lasso and subsequent smoothing of the selection - anyway, later the reflection will either be blurry, or its transparency will be significantly reduced.

When working with reflection, you can separately show your imagination - duplicate the layer and blur bright areas to give a glow effect, experiment with layer blending modes:

After the desired background is placed, the size is reduced to the desired by the customer, the final sharp and Save for Web. I think that these stages do not need to be described in detail.

On average, an experienced technical designer with a tablet takes 2-2.5 hours to complete the described work.