The Beauty and Sadness of Jewelry Photography Retouching.

by Genia Larionova :

This is the before and after post-production and 100% crop from one of our commercial jewelry photography assignments last year. Posting to show the amount of work required from a jewelry retoucher, when the jewelry is worn and not clean. Sometimes I had to almost completely re-create part of the item: it appears to be faster than trying to restore lost finish and colors.

Note: Most of the “before” images came from RAW files with default raw converter settings, before any adjustments.

We made about 50 images for a talented jewelry designer Elizabeth Dupree Lynch’s Fine Jewelry collection. All jewelry was handcrafted by an Italian jewelry master; therefore, retouching was not easy. It took us many hours to complete. Many thanks to Anna Yenina for helping me with this project.

All “before” objects showed are as-is (Camera RAW default settings) photo before focus stacking was applied. The first image from a sequence is what you’ll see as a “before” shot. Images “after” have focus stacking already applied.

I am going to do “focus stacking in Photoshop cs5″ in the next post.

Some images may look overdone, (especially at 100% crop), but this is what we were able to do considering the items’ condition (not new) and an extremely tight schedule for post production.

Jewelry Photography Heavy Retouching: Before and After