Jewelry finishing is the final surface treatment, bringing them to the state of presentation. Finishing operations can be classified into three types: mechanical finishing - polishing, embossing, engraving: decorative protective coatings - enameling, blackening; chemical treatment - oxidation and electroplating.

Polishing. The essence of the polishing process is to remove microroughnesses from the metal surface, thereby achieving a high class of cleanliness and surface mirroring. Jewelry can be polished before oxidation, before being coated with a layer of another metal. Basically, two types of jewelry polishing are used: mechanical and electrochemical. Mechanical polishing is called piecewise polishing of products with and without an abrasive. Mass polishing methods - in drums and containers, despite the fact that they are actually also mechanical, are called galvanic and vibration treatment.

Electrochemical polishing is anodic etching of products in an electrolyte environment under the action of an electric current.

Embossing is a type of artistic metal processing with special punches-embossing, as a result of which the workpiece takes on an incorrect image. The essence of the minting process lies in the fact that as a result of the pressure exerted on the minting (hammer blow), a trace will remain on the metal in the shape of the working part of the minting. Repeated strikes of various embossings knock out a given pattern.

Distinguish between manual and machine embossing. Embossing is considered manual if the process of knocking out the image is done manually. Machine embossing is a stamping operation performed on presses using dies. Modern equipment makes it possible to obtain high quality images, therefore stamping has significantly reduced the use of hand embossing in the manufacture of jewelry. Coinage should be considered not as a type of decoration, but as an independent type of product manufacturing, which occupies a large place in the art industry.

Engraving is a type of artistic processing of a product, which consists in cutting out a pattern on a product with strokes. In jewelry practice, manual two-dimensional (planar) engraving is used - a complex and time-consuming process that requires great skill, endurance and concentration from the performer.

Enamel is one of the types of decorative processing of jewelry. Enamel is an easily fusible glass of a complex composition, intended for melting on metal; a complex enamel composition is necessary for the strength of fusion with the metal. In terms of chemical composition, enamels are salts of silicic acid, and the components of the alloy are oxides of lead, silicon, potassium, barium, sodium, antimony and oxide of coloring metals. The color of enamels is the most diverse and is achieved by introducing appropriate dyes into the alloy. There are enamels applied to products by firing.

Blackening - as one of the types of decorative processing of jewelry has been used for a long time. Products with niello, found on the territory of our country. The essence of the blackening process is to apply a fusible black alloy - black on the specified areas of the product. Silver jewelry is decorated with niello. Mobile is an alloy of sulfides of silver, copper, lead, sulfur. In some recipes, lead can be replaced with tin and borax, aluminum chloride, and bismuth can be added to the alloy.

Oxidation of jewelry is designed to protect it from tarnishing. The essence of the oxidation process lies in the deposition of a chemically resistant protective film on the surface of products, which makes it possible to increase their decorative qualities and corrosion resistance. Oxidation is carried out in two ways: chemical and electrochemical. A distinction is made between colored oxidation and colorless passivation.

Electroplating - the process is the deposition of one metal on another in an electrolyte environment. In the jewelry industry, gold, silver, and less often radium are used as electroplated coatings. The purpose of such coatings is to give products a certain decorative look, to improve their mechanical characteristics. The processes of gilding and silvering have been known for a long time; radiation has been used in recent years.

The coatings obtained in the galvanization process are distinguished by high strength, and the process itself is economical. Solutions of salts and acids are used as electrolytes in galvanization.

Today our guest is a very large and at the same time difficult topic - processing of photographs of jewelry, watches and other small items. Many friends and colleagues have been looking forward to 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. Complicated by the fact that post-processing (retouching) was mainly reduced to manual removal of the largest defects directly on film or photographic plate, or to processing a paper print with a pencil, ink and other familiar tools of the artist.

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

In the digital era, the work of product and catalog photographers has become easier, as 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 the processing of jewelry photographs solve?

1. Selecting and converting source 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 smallest defects and technological features (scratches, dents, non-staining, etc.) can look terrifying. Also, matrix noise is superimposed on the image, especially in the shadows.

3. Correction of defective reflexes and their completion, if necessary.

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

4. Improving the cut-off pattern.

During processing, a special gloss is achieved by careful processing and improvement of cut-off contrasts, adding light and dark spots.

5. Processing of precious stones.

As a rule, the customer makes special demands on the quality of the gemstones available in the items. Even if the proper play of light is achieved during shooting, it cannot do without processing - somewhere you need to sharpen the sharpness, somewhere to raise the contrast, somewhere to add a color "spectrum".

6. Color correction.

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

7. Improving the sharpness of the image and increasing the local contrast.

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 sufficiently large pixel (for example, Canon 5D), the real 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 the article by Vladimir Medvedev about diffraction). Usually jewelry is shot at apertures from 16 to 26 (for 35mm format), at these values ​​the frame can lose due to diffraction up to half of its real resolution. Of course, this deficiency must be somehow made up for.

8. Clipping and background setting.

As a rule, the customer prefers to be able to subsequently independently put the products on any background he needs. But even if you don't need to change the substrate in the future, the original background usually needs to be reworked (re-pouring, eliminating defects, debris, etc.), which naturally cannot be done without clipping. Also, clipping is needed to separate the subject and its reflection, if the shooting was carried out against a mirror background.

9. Optimization for the web.

Most often, the main area of ​​application of the 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).

Selecting and converting raw RAW files

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

My experience 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 completely unsuccessful technically or lighting shots is carried out. It is useful to save the conversion settings once as a preset if the shooting is carried out 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, along which the WB is set using an eyedropper.

At the stage of generating a preview gallery for the customer, it seems advisable 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 (simultaneously rotating frames to align the vertical of the horizon).

The selected images are added to the Quick collection, from which the 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 of at least 80.

After the gallery is generated and saved to disk, it is uploaded to the hosting or sent in the 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": a less contrasting camera profile is selected, USM is either turned off altogether, or set to a small value, since sharpness will be added later and most likely selectively.

The selected frames are converted to TIFF or PSD with sRGB profile. The issue of bitness of the image is worthy of 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 in any case be smoothed by subsequent retouching. However, you can use a 16-bit process, only considering that the files will be larger, and the applied filters will be almost twice as slow.

Immediately after conversion, you need to collect all additional frames in one PSD file on layers. For example, 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 processing jewelry by removing 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 in particular pearl inserts.

For this, it is convenient to use some good noise reduction. I have been using Topaz Denoise for a long time - its algorithm is ideal precisely for cleaning smooth metal surfaces. We make the first pass with noise reduction with gentle 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 tool 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 Hide all layer mask and develop the cleaned image on homogeneous areas, without touching the areas where you want to preserve detail.

We collapse.

Likewise, each time on a new layer with a mask, go through the product with the Median and Surface blur filters. The first of them allows you to smooth out rough irregularities 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 gets rid of roughness and spots in homogeneous areas.

With such pre-filtration, 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 it is always possible to filter out irregularities or defects at any stage of processing.

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

Correcting defective reflexes

However, most often it becomes necessary to radically change the shape of individual reflexes, in some cases, to correct the shape of the product itself.

This is where the wonderful tool Liquify comes to our rescue. Using brushes of different diameters, we straighten first large parts, and then small ones. Liquify even allows you to actually paint reflexes, stretching them to the desired length, molding them like plasticine.

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

After that comes the most painstaking stage - manual retouching using the Brush, Spot healing brush and Stamp tools.

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

In some cases, it is possible to do without such revision, but it brings the result of the work to a qualitatively new level and quite unambiguously characterizes the level of professionalism. As a rule, it is precisely a high-quality hand-retouched product that creates the impression of a “tasty” and moderately idealized shot, which the customer likes so much.

In the process of manual retouching, places on the product are also usually painted over, which contained traces of installation (stands, drops of hot melt glue 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 the hand-shaded hatch.

Improving the cut-off pattern

When I work, I most often evaluate the product as the next stage for the need to finish painting individual light spots, sharp highlights, and at the same time adding contrast to individual areas of the shadows. These operations are performed using the Dodge tool and Burn tool, with the Protect tones option disabled. Bold and confident strokes add highlights and dots in the reflections to make them more vivid (Dodge tool in Highlights mode), and make the shadows more contrasting (Burn tool in Shadows mode). For some flat reflections with solid colors, you can use these two tools to create soft-edged gradients and highlights that simulate shooting with diffuse panels.

Processing of precious stones

Now we turn to the processing of precious stones. Our main goal here is to make them play on their own, and also to stand out from the background of the entire product.

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

Rarely is it enough to just add some contrast to the curves, go through the Dodge tool and Burn tool and sharpen it.

It is very difficult to make "play" a scattering of small diamonds or cubic zirconias, 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, making it sparkle. In this case, you should use the USM tool with a large radius, which will significantly increase the local contrast, and then, if possible, brighten the stones from the background metal, brightening the stones with curves, and darkening the metal under them locally using the Burn tool in Miditones or Highlights mode.

The rainbow play of diamonds is generally a separate topic for both shooting and processing. Despite the apparent obviousness of this effect when viewing the product in person, it is rather difficult to obtain when shooting, although many photographers use LED panels. Some photographers also have know-how, so carefully guarded as a professional secret, but rather easily disclosed if their work is carefully examined. For example, if you carefully study the works of Sergei Pryanechnikov, it becomes obvious that when shooting stones in a separate frame, either two colored light sources or a pair of reflectors of blue and yellow-orange colors, which, illuminating the stone from different sides and mixing in its edges, create the impression of a rainbow spectrum.

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

There are two proven methods that are designed to more or less faithfully mimic 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 opacity 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 a few blotches of color. For example, the brightest highlights look quite natural, slightly tinted in a yellow tint, and some places in the shadows tinted in blue.

Whichever method we choose, the basic principle of creating a colored game of stones is to collide two ranges of contrasting shades of color - blue-blue and yellow-orange.

You can try to do this using these exotic curves:

Color correction

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

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 the pearls will be reproduced in the photograph. It would seem that what is the difficulty - they put a gray card, poked it with an eyedropper when converting RAW - and order. But it must be borne in mind that, say, white pearls, which we get in the photo and the way the customer and the client imagine it, are two big differences. As a rule, when shooting pearls come out too dark, without a kind of internal glow effect, which, according to the customer, usually distinguishes natural pearls from artificial ones (the latter visually does not have this internal glow and only plays with a surface layer).

It is advisable to put pearls on a separate layer and leave there, in contrast to precious stones, avoiding their processing with a sharpener, 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? Isn't it easier to use a gray card at the stage of shooting, then take the white balance from it and actually get the exact real color of the shot product?

The fact is that here we are again faced with the same problem of the photographer-jeweler, which makes him spend hours retouching - 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.

Silver goes separately, 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 so happens that the customer wants dark yellow gold to retain its original saturated and somewhat toxic shade, and it also happens that this color has to be lightened and its saturation reduced, usually in cases when the customer associates such shades with cheap low-grade Arabic gold.

Rose gold is also often controversial, as some people like the pronounced copper hue, while others prefer the soft pink. It's 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 or not to keep this shade 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 items made of white yellow gold. Obviously, if you follow the path of least resistance, then it is easier to remove and retouch a yellow-gold item, and to obtain a white-gold item by bleaching. Usually this point is discussed with the customer and in 90% of cases, problems do not arise. On the contrary, the customer often prefers uniformly rendered products if they have the same design. This moment is especially relevant when working with wristwatches, when a series of ten 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 repainting gold to silver and vice versa. In the first case, most often it is impossible to simply discolor the metal through Desaturate, since this changes the ratio of shades, and most importantly, the customer often perceives completely discolored products extremely negatively. Here, it is advisable to repaint in two stages: first, we decolorize completely through the Channel mixer, choosing such a ratio of channels at which the optimal overall brightness of the product will be achieved, and after that we 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 yellowness to highlights and blues to shadows. It is convenient to do this on a separate layer in order to weaken or enhance the effect to taste later.

Before starting work on the products, you should discuss the colors with the customer, it would be nice if the customer himself could provide color samples. Getting into them is an exclusively technical matter. You can do color correction by eye, you can 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).

Improving image sharpness and increasing local contrast

Once the stones and pearls have been laid out on separate layers and all the elements have been color graded, you can start enhancing the local contrast to give the product the same polish that customers usually call "tasty 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 photography, when shots go to an online store in the form of small previews.

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

Despite the fact that there is a rich arsenal of plugins, for example, Topaz Detail, over the years of working with jewelry I have come to 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 increase or decrease the effect by changing the transparency of this layer.

The second step is to apply curves to the layer, where the extreme black point is slightly shifted into the light (black turned into dark gray), and the white point opposite is shifted into the shadow, and the white becomes light gray. This is necessary because the following steps tend to narrow the dynamic range of the image, making shadows darker and highlights lighter, resulting in more flare and blackouts.

The actual enhancement of the local contrast 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 shots from the 5D MkII camera, I use USM for the first time with a radius of 25-30 and a force of 20 (large details become much more contrasting), the second time with radii of 5-7 and a force of 20-30 (smaller details and textures are enhanced) and finally the third time - with a radius of 1-1.5 and a force of up to 100 (and this is actually a banal sharp, which sharpens the contours and enhances small textures).

Clipping and background staging

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

To all photographers, without exception, who make large orders on the subject, I heartily advise you to find yourself a specially trained partner who would only deal with clipping. In the market for design services, this work is, in principle, inexpensive (maximum - 50 rubles per frame, if this is not a portrait where you have to etch your hair). With an average price for a processed frame of jewelry 400-500 rubles. clipping for 50 r. seems like a good deal that saves both time and nerves. Find a retired technical designer (retired, on maternity leave, freelance - underline what you need), who would be in touch during the working day, throw him a file and receive an etched product in half an hour. Spend that time yourself retouching the next shot. Think - 50 rubles multiplied by 10 products is only 500 rubles, while for you it will actually save almost a whole working day (taking into account the fact that the person on the clipping dog ate the dog and works, in principle, faster than you).

But if you nevertheless decide to work completely yourself, then the poisoning of jewelry and watches should be done approximately according to this algorithm.

If the product does not reflect well from the background, it is useful to create an adjustment layer with curves to make it easier to work, making the image stronger, brighter or darker for the best visibility.

Clipping is usually done with a pen, although individual elements (such as pearls) can be easily etched using round selection.

The process itself does not require detailed comments. But there are situations that are confusing. 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 some channel or using the Magic wand. But what if the chain almost merges with the background?

Clipping each link individually is not an option. No customer will pay you the working day spent on this.

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

There are several of these presets in my arsenal, which I use to create chains where clipping would be too time consuming:

After the clipping is complete, the created selection can be refined using the Refine selection tool, removing the remnants of white or dark outlines or smoothing out irregularities. 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.

The reflection of the product is separately etched. Here you can "cheat" a little, i.e. apply, for example, a linear lasso and the subsequent smoothing of the selection - all the same, later the reflection will either be blurred, or its transparency will be significantly reduced.

When working with reflection, you can separately show your imagination - duplicate a 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 there is no need to describe these stages in detail.

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

What tasks should the processing of digital photos of jewelry solve?

1. Selecting and converting the original RAW files of digital photos of jewelry

2. Elimination of defects in jewelry and noise

Jewelry is small in reality, while in a practical application, digital photos can be printed on very large formats, where even the slightest defects and technological features (scratches, dents, unpainted, etc.) can look terrifying. Also, matrix noise is superimposed on the image, especially in the shadows.

3. Correction of defective reflexes and their completion, if necessary.

When photographing, it is not always possible to arrange the light in such a way that the reflexes on the decoration have an ideal shape. It is often easier to bring them to mind already when processing digital photos than to waste shooting time. Often, individual reflexes are generally drawn completely from scratch where they were not at all when shooting.

4. Improving the cut-off pattern.

During processing, a special gloss is achieved by careful processing and improvement of cut-off contrasts, adding light and dark spots.

5. Processing of digital photos of precious stones.

As a rule, the customer has special requirements for the quality of the performance of precious stones in jewelry. Even if the proper play of light is achieved when photographing, it cannot do without processing - somewhere you need to sharpen the sharpness, somewhere to raise the contrast, somewhere to add a color "spectrum".

6. Color correction.

Usually, all photos need color correction, not only due to inaccuracies in the camera's color rendition, but also due to the fact that the metal of the jewelry itself may have color irregularities or not correspond to the customer's ideas about the ideal.

7. Improving the sharpness of the image and increasing the local contrast.

Photo technology involves the use of large aperture numbers in order to put jewelry in the DOF. in this case, even on cameras with a sufficiently large pixel (for example, Canon 5D), the real aperture at which the jewelry 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 the article by Vladimir Medvedev about diffraction). Usually jewelry photography is carried out at apertures from 16 to 26 (for 35 mm format), at these values ​​the image can lose due to diffraction up to half of its real resolution. Of course, this deficiency must be somehow made up for.

8. Clipping and background setting.

As a rule, the client prefers to be able to subsequently independently put jewelry on any background he needs. But even if you don't need to change the substrate in the future, the original background usually needs to be reworked (re-pouring, eliminating defects, debris, etc.), which naturally cannot be done without clipping. Also, clipping is needed to separate the object and its reflection, if the photo was taken against a mirror background.

9. Optimization for the web.

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

Selecting and converting raw RAW files

Usually, immediately after the shooting, the photographer sends the client a preview of the raw photographs so that the customer selects the angles they like and the photo with the most successful light-and-shadow pattern and the location of reflexes from his point of view.

My experience 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 completely unsuccessful technically or lighting shots is carried out. It is useful to save the conversion settings once as a preset if the shooting is carried out with the same equipment and in approximately the same conditions.

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

At the stage of generating a preview gallery for an advertiser, it seems advisable 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 photographs are cropped to fit the jewelry (rotating the photographs along the way to align the vertical of the horizon).

The selected images are added to the Quick collection, from which the 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 of at least 80.

After the gallery is generated and saved to disk, it is uploaded to the hosting or sent in the 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": a less contrasting camera profile is selected, USM is either turned off altogether, or set to a small value, since sharpness will be added later and most likely selectively.

Selected photos of jewelry are converted to TIFF or PSD format with sRGB profile. The issue of image bitness is worthy of discussion in a special article, 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 in any case be smoothed by subsequent retouching. However, you can use a 16-bit process, only considering that the files will be larger, and the applied filters will be almost twice as slow.

Immediately after conversion, you need to collect all additional photos in one PSD file on layers. For example, if we took a single frame with diamonds, then this image needs to be dragged into the main working image.

Elimination of jewelry defects and noise

I usually start processing digital photos of jewelry by removing 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 in particular pearl inserts.

For this, it is convenient to use some good noise reduction. I have been using Topaz Denoise for a long time - its algorithm is ideal precisely for cleaning smooth metal surfaces. We make the first pass with noise reduction with gentle 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 tool is done with very aggressive settings, but already on a single layer. You can see how Topaz removes even fairly large scratches and defects.

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

We collapse.

Likewise, each time on a new layer with a mask, iterate over the jewelry with the Median and Surface blur filters. The first of them allows you to smooth out rough irregularities 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 gets rid of roughness and spots in homogeneous areas.

With such pre-filtration, you should not overdo it and lick your jewelry like a plastic fiction. It will not be possible to return the lost texture later, but it is always possible to filter out irregularities or defects at any stage of processing.

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

Correcting defective reflexes

However, most often there is a need for a radical change in the shape of individual reflexes, in isolated cases of editing the shape of the jewelry itself.

This is where the wonderful tool Liquify comes to our rescue. Using brushes of different diameters, we straighten first large parts, and then small ones. Liquify even allows you to actually paint reflexes, stretching them to the desired length, molding them like plasticine.

Liquify is a very powerful tool with tremendous potential, so it's always worth taking another look at the piece of jewelry before clicking OK.

After that comes the most painstaking stage - manual retouching using the Brush, Spot healing brush and Stamp tools.

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

In exceptional cases, it is possible to do without such revision, but it brings the result of the work to a qualitatively new level and quite unambiguously characterizes the level of professionalism. As a rule, it is precisely a high-quality hand-retouched piece of jewelry that creates the impression of a “tasty” and moderately idealized shot, which the customer likes so much.

In the process of manual retouching, places on the product are usually painted over, which contained traces of installation (stands, drops of hot melt glue and jewelry mastic, with which the jewelry 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 the hand-shaded hatch.

Improving the cut-off pattern

When I work, the next step is to evaluate a piece of jewelry for the need to paint single light spots, sharp highlights, and at the same time add contrast to isolated areas of shadows. These operations are performed using the Dodge tool and Burn tool, with the Protect tones option disabled. Bold and confident strokes add highlights and dots in the reflections to make them more vivid (Dodge tool in Highlights mode), and make the shadows more contrasting (Burn tool in Shadows mode). For some flat reflections with solid colors, you can use these two tools to create soft-edged gradients and highlights that simulate a photograph using diffuse panels.

Digital photo processing precious stones

Now we turn to the processing of precious stones. Our main goal here is to make them play on their own and also stand out from the background of the whole piece of jewelry.
The stones need to be taken out on a separate layer - the clipping is done in any convenient way, but in the case of stones, it is most convenient to use the Quick mask.

Rarely is it enough to just add some contrast to the curves, go through the Dodge tool and Burn tool and sharpen it.

It is very difficult to make "play" a scattering of small diamonds or cubic zirconias, 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, making it sparkle. In this case, you should use the USM tool with a large radius, which will significantly increase the local contrast, and then, if possible, brighten the stones from the background metal, brightening the stones with curves, and darkening the metal under them locally using the Burn tool in Miditones or Highlights mode.

The rainbow play of diamonds is generally an independent topic for both shooting and processing. Despite the apparent obviousness of this effect when viewing the product in person, it is rather difficult to obtain when shooting, although many photographers use LED panels. Some photographers also have know-how, so carefully guarded as a professional secret, but rather easily disclosed if their work is carefully examined. For example, if you carefully study the works of Sergei Pryanechnikov, it becomes obvious that when photographing stones in a separate frame, he uses either two color light sources or a pair of reflectors of blue and yellow-orange colors, which, illuminating the stone from different sides and mixing in its edges, create the impression of a rainbow spectrum.

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

There are two proven methods that are designed to more or less faithfully mimic 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 opacity 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 single blotches of color. For example, the brightest highlights, slightly tinted in a yellow tint, and isolated places in the shadows tinted in blue, look quite natural.

Whichever method we choose, the basic principle of creating a colored game of stones is to collide two ranges of contrasting shades of color - blue-blue and yellow-orange.

You can try to do this using these exotic curves:

Color correction of jewelry photo

As part of the conversation about color correction, the processing of pearls, which are part of a piece of jewelry, deserves a special conversation.

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 the pearls will be reproduced in the photograph. It would seem that what is the difficulty - they put a gray card, poked it with an eyedropper when converting RAW - and order. But it must be borne in mind that, say, white pearls, which we get in the photo and the way the customer and the client imagine it, are two big differences. As a rule, when photographing pearls come out too dark, without a peculiar effect of internal glow, which, according to the advertiser, usually distinguishes natural pearls from artificial ones (the latter visually does not have this internal glow and only plays with a surface layer).

It is advisable to put pearls on a single layer and leave there, in contrast to precious stones, avoiding their processing with a sharpener, 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? Isn't it easier to use a gray card at the stage of photographing, then take the white balance from it and actually get the exact real color of the shot product?

The fact is that here again we are faced with the same problem of the photographer-jeweler, which makes him retouch for hours - imperfection itself photo of jewelry and client stereotypes.

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

Silver goes separately, which can also have a variety of shades.

The main problem is that the color the seller wants to see is usually different from the color of the piece of jewelry itself. It so happens that a jeweler wants dark yellow gold to retain its original saturated and somewhat toxic hue, and it also happens that this color has to be lightened and its saturation reduced, usually in cases when the client associates such shades with cheap low-grade Arabic gold.

Rose gold is also often controversial, as some people like the pronounced copper hue, while others prefer the soft pink. It's 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 or not to keep this shade depends solely on the opinion of the customer.

It often happens that identical products made of different metals are provided for photographing. Let's say this piece of jewelry is made of white yellow gold. Obviously, if you follow the path of least resistance, then it is easier to remove and touch up the yellow-gold piece, and to get white-gold piece by discoloration. Usually this moment is discussed with the client and in 90% of cases, problems do not arise. On the contrary, a manufacturer often prefers uniformly rendered products if they are of the same design. This moment is especially relevant when working with wristwatches, when a series of ten 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 repainting gold to silver and vice versa. In the first case, most often it is impossible to simply discolor the metal through Desaturate, since this changes the ratio of shades, and most importantly, the customer often perceives completely discolored products extremely negatively. Here, it is advisable to repaint in two stages: first, we decolorize completely through the Channel mixer, choosing such a channel ratio at which the optimal overall brightness of the jewelry is achieved, and after that we add a small amount of color so that the jewelry has a natural look. I usually do this with a Blue curve, adding a little yellowness to highlights and blues to shadows. It is convenient to do this on a separate layer, so that later weaken or enhance the effect to taste.

Before starting work on the products, you should discuss the colors with the customer; it would be nice if the customer himself could provide color samples. Getting into them is an exclusively technical matter. You can do color correction by eye, you can 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).

Improving image sharpness and increasing local contrast

Once the stones and pearls have been laid out on different layers and all the elements have been color graded, you can begin to enhance the local contrast to give the jewelry the same polish that advertisers usually refer to as "tasty 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 photography, when photos are sent to an online store in the form of small previews.

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

Despite the fact that there is a rich arsenal of plugins, for example, Topaz Detail, over the years of working with jewelry I have come to 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.

The second step is to apply curves to the layer, where the extreme black point is slightly shifted into the light (black turned into dark gray), and the white point opposite is shifted into the shadow, and the white becomes light gray. This is necessary because the following steps tend to narrow the dynamic range of the image, making shadows darker and highlights lighter, resulting in more flare and blackouts.

The actual enhancement of the local contrast 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 shots from the 5D MkII camera, I use USM for the first time with a radius of 25-30 and a force of 20 (large details become much more contrasting), the second time with radii of 5-7 and a force of 20-30 (smaller details and textures are enhanced) and finally the third time - with a radius of 1-1.5 and a force of up to 100 (and this is actually a banal sharp, which sharpens the contours and enhances small textures).

After applying such an algorithm, it may seem to a newbie of subject shooting that the image has a clear overshoot, 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 background staging

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

To all photographers, without exception, who make large orders on the subject, I heartily advise you to find yourself a specially trained partner who would only deal with clipping. In the market for design services, this work is, in principle, inexpensive (maximum - 50 rubles per photo, if it is not a portrait where you have to etch your hair). With an average price for a processed frame of jewelry 400-500 rubles. clipping for 50 r. seems like a good deal that saves both time and nerves. Find a retired technical designer (retired, on maternity leave, freelance - underline what you need), who would be in touch during the working day, throw him a file and receive the etched jewelry in half an hour. Spend that time yourself retouching the next shot. Think - 50 rubles multiplied by 10 products is only 500 rubles, while for you it will actually save almost a whole working day (taking into account the fact that the person on the clipping dog ate the dog and works, in principle, faster than you).

But if you still decide to work completely yourself, then the poisoning of jewelry and watches should be done approximately according to this algorithm.
If the piece of jewelry does not reflect the background well, it is helpful to create a Curves Adjustment Layer to make it easier to work with, brightening, brightening or darkening the image for best visibility.

Clipping is usually done with a pen, although detached elements (such as pearls) are more conveniently etched with a round selection.
The process itself does not require detailed comments. But there are situations that are confusing. For example, a piece of jewelry on a chain of a couple of hundred links. What to do in this case?

If the jewelry 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 almost merges with the background?

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

There are several of these presets in my arsenal, which I use to create chains where clipping would be too time consuming:

After the clipping is complete, the created selection can be refined using the Refine selection tool, removing the remnants of white or dark outlines or smoothing out irregularities. The resulting selection can be saved as an alpha channel, or you can immediately place the piece of jewelry on a single layer, if you are sure that the shape of the clipping will not have to be changed later.

The reflection of the jewelry is separately etched. Here you can "cheat" a little, i.e. apply, for example, a linear lasso and the subsequent smoothing of the selection - all the same, later the reflection will either be blurred, or its transparency will be significantly reduced.

When working with reflection, you can separately show your imagination - duplicate a 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 client, the final sharp and Save for Web. I think there is no need to describe these stages in detail.

On average, the entire processing of digital photos by an experienced technical designer with a tablet takes 2-2.5 hours.

Retouching jewelry is aimed at giving shine to stones, facets, as well as darkening colored stones and brightening diamonds and cubic zirconia. You can perform such retouching using adjustment layers responsible for shadows and lights.

Opening the original image (example). In this tutorial, I used a clipart of a jewel at a good resolution, so that the smallest details of the processing were visible. A background layer has been created under the clip art layer. Since the clipart was taken for work, I had to correct such a nuance as increased sharpness at the edges of the image. To make a correction, make a duplicate of the clip art layer. Apply a slight blur to the original clip art layer.

Add a layer mask to the duplicate layer with the clip-art and in it with a brush of a soft type of black color at a low opacity, lightly 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 an adjustment layer "Black - White". In the dialog box, distribute the content of the primary colors.

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

To add brightness and shine to white stones: diamonds, cubic zirconia and others, apply an adjustment layer "Brightness / Contrast".

The layer mask of the adjustment layer is also filled in, separate areas are revealed and the data of the adjustment layer is adjusted.

Next, darken individual areas of the 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 a layer mask, reveal some areas and adjust the layer settings.

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

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

Create the illusion of a star-shaped sparkle. 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, put a white star with a brush.

Add shine to the star. Create a new layer. Fill it with black. Apply "Rendering - Highlights" to this layer.

Change the glare layer to "Screen". In the layers window, select two layers: a layer with a brush and a layer with a glare: while holding down the Shift key, press first on one layer, then on the other, and reduce them with the "Scaling" function.

RESULT

When the processing is already complete, you can slightly tweak the layers responsible for the lighting, that is, the adjustment layer "Levels". As a result, the opacity was slightly reduced.