Jewelry retouching

[prettyjoe]

Does anybody have any idea how to retouch thi ring professionally?Make the stone pop, remove the noise from stone, make the metal pop etc?

here is the file Dropbox - JR3803 (2).ARW.jpg

[astrobutch0901]

I started with much the same as you. Once cutout, I applied many gradients to the facets of the ring, particularly in the shank by making paths. Dodge and burn helped to shape it. De saturate the ring too, black and white removes the strange colour casts you get from flare etc but don't go mad, let some colour come back through as a natural grade. Don't be afraid to let the whites go to zero-dot white because  silver will have natural specular highlights.

Added custom brushes at the end made it pop and sharpen using high pass filters. I put it on a grad black, reflected it( a bit of license there!) and gave a tickle of a shadow..

Hope that helps

Butch

[chanaart]

This is beautiful !

And I am sure iti s going to help others as well!

Maybe a tutorial on Tech Wednesday?

We always looking for more ideas and more people!

Chana

[astrobutch0901]

Whats that Chana? I am rather new to these forums!

Thanks

Butch

[Chuck Uebele]

Adobe has webinars every Wednesday, some are NDA, other are open. They have various people give demonstrations on different apps.

[chanaart]

Send a note to Tricia and if you are an ACP or AEL it will be great to have

you present to the group!

On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 07:14 astrobutch0901 <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[prettyjoe]

OK I made this what do you think?

Dropbox - JR3803-(2)b.ARW.jpg

[astrobutch0901]

I think you have done a great job!

Think about a bit more light and shade around the ring bottom edge. Rings can look a bit flat unless you lift the gradation around the shank. There is some tonality that is similar and needs some separation.

With your permission, can I use the image and annotate it a bit to help?

[prettyjoe]

yes please that is why I posted original so you guys can work on it @astrobutch can you explain in more details what you would improve? Also the stone I want to make it more clear.....

Sadly the res is small, i dont have th bigger pic.....

[prettyjoe]

astrobutch you mean more burn where the ring is touching the floor?

What about the tonality?

[astrobutch0901]

Look at the image of mine again, see how there are darker areas of tone in the shank as it disappears into the top of the ring. This gives natural contrast with the other tones of white/grey

make the gradation of tone a bit non-uniform too as otherwise it will look a bit flat.

with the jewel facets, lighten them, make more selections and adjust the brightness of them, make your blacks black and your whites white, zero-dot.

I hope this helps..

[prettyjoe]

I dont know what it means zero dot? You mean to completely desaturate it? I use desaturate tool and pull the slider back

[prettyjoe]

What you think now?  

[astrobutch0901]

Really starting to get somewhere, needs more darker tones, I think the image is starting to break up a bit.

[astrobutch0901]

It means no pixel information in the white. You'll have to excuse me, I worked a lot in repro and often retouched in CMYK not RGB, when there is 0% in Cyan,Magenta,Yellow and Key, it was said to be zero-dot, i.e. no pixel information and therefore completely page-white.

Desaturate only means to pull colour out the image but it can still have tone, effectively its a black and white.

I feel I may be confusing the issue. Just make sure that you have a good tonal contrast range from black to pure white.

[prettyjoe]

If i take out all the color, it will look gray.....It is hard to make it white...

[prettyjoe]

Ok another try, it looks too dark, what do you think?  Dropbox - JR3803-(2)g.jpg

[pixxxelschubser]

prettyjoe  schrieb

… Sadly the res is small, i dont have th bigger pic.....

Sometimes it's better to make a new (and better) photo instead of spending many hours on work in Photoshop.

The better the original the better the result.

[astrobutch0901]

Agreed but sometimes its simply not possible due to speed and cost, you need a catch-all situation and a fast PS operative!

[pixxxelschubser]

Hi prettyjoe​,

not bad for the beginning.

But the biggest problem is: your original image does not have enough pixels. Do you have a better image?

[JonathanArias]

if you are interested in creating amazing effects in photoshop i would recommend pixel playground in lynda.com:

Pixel Playground

Bert Monroy is amazing at showing you how to accomplish amazing effects in photoshop. Its great for learning how light behaves and how to use the tools in photoshop to create those effects

[astrobutch0901]

I think the rest is up to you prettyjoe, the ring looks a bit flat and needs more tonality(shades of black to white) but these are creative decisions that you have to make for yourself in many ways.

I have shown you an image I made, given more instruction by annotating it. Maybe you can do some research on other jewellery shots on websites and shops and see how they compare to your shots.

The beauty of retouching is understanding what you are trying to achieve at the beginning and gearing the whole process to that result with the tools at your disposal.

[prettyjoe]

why you cant do my item, so I can see if you can do it better?

[pixxxelschubser]

Again.

Sorry but the picture is too bad. The effort too high.