A little retouching can make any jewelry chain sparkle!
When it comes to retouching jewelry, editing necklaces can be pretty involved. This is because they have intricate chains that need to be carefully cut out and cleaned up, along with the pendant. Normally, both the chain and the pendant are very detailed. This requires precision and a steady hand on the part of the editor. If you are running an e-commerce business or online shop for jewelry, making sure your accessories look great in photos is a step in the right direction.
In this guide, we give you a closer look at how we transform an image straight from the RAW shot to the final photo.
1. Clean Up the Product
When it comes to jewelry edits, the very first step is to clean up the product. Keep an eye out for any dust, scratches, and other imperfections if there are any so you know what to remove. To clean the jewelry, you can utilize either Spot Healing Brush Tool (you can use it to automatically clean areas with imperfection), Patch Tool (use this tool by selecting a clean area you desire drag it along the area you want to clean) or Clone Tool (you can use this tool by identifying an area you want to duplicate or clone). You can cycle the use of these tools depending on how hard you’ll remove the imperfections in the image.
2. Filter Out the Noise
Another way to remove dust or scratches is to go to Filter> Noise> “Dust &Scratches”. This process does the job of getting rid of the dust or scratches on the image automatically. However, this effect is applied all over the image so you should utilize masking to target the specific area you need to clean to avoid making unwanted changes.
In this particular project, I haven’t seen any imperfections to clean up, so I went straight to creating the Paths.
3. Start With a Blank Canvas
Make the jewelry pop by placing it on a white background. To do this, you need to create a clipping path using Pen tool. Precisely track the edges of your product and start clipping. Once you create the Path, you can use this to cut out the subject from the raw image. Create a layer mask & then put a White “Color Fill” layer below the layer mask. You can do so by going to the “Create new fill or adjustment layer” Icon, just right below the Layer Tab. This results in a clean, white background that is free from grain and noise.
4. Polish It Off
Like any retouching project, this process is about enhancing what is already there. Begin the Color Enhancement process by assessing your image. In this particular project, we need to make the chain and charm silver. You can experiment on Curves, Level, Hue & Saturation, and Selective Color to achieve that consistent silver color. Remember to utilize masking to the areas that needs enhancing so that we do not affect areas that are enhanced already. Here is a picture of the enhanced silver color that we want.
5. Tweak To Your Liking
If we want or need to change the color of the jewelry, we can use “Solid Color Fill” or Hue & Saturation. In this project we will change the silver into gold. Use the “Solid Color Fill” to create the gold color. Keep in mind that sometimes we cannot swap the entire color in one fell swoop. This is because of the minute details present in jewelry. In this case, there are diamonds on the piece. We can use two ways to remove the color over the diamonds. You can opt to either to create a clipping path or use a brush. In this step, I used the brush which is much easier than individually clipping the numerous diamonds. Make sure to be precise while using the Brush tool.
Pro Tip: A Wacom Tablet or a similar device may be of great help for precise clipping!
6. Apply Finishing Touches
Keep in mind that for any enhancement process, you should adjust the properties for a realistic and natural finish. To make the gold color more realistic, we played around with the colors and properties of the image. In this step I added “Color Balance” adjustment layer. What it does is it lets you change or adjust the Highlight, Midtown, & Shadow colors of your subject. This will result in a stunning and uncanny image that looks sharp and real!
We hope that this short guide helped you with your own chain retouching needs. Make any piece look impressive down to the finest detail with this how-to guide by the Jewelry Retouchers team!
