My Tips for Editing Jewellery

Easy on the skin softening
It’s so tempting to over do it on this one but try to preserve some of that beautiful skin texture if not all of it! Play around with the brush tool and just reducing the clarity alone, then just the texture. Perhaps just reducing one of them can have a more natural effect than the combination of both but just make sure to start in really small increments and keep zooming out to check your progress against the context of the full image.

Increase the clarity of the jewellery
A really simple one. Take the brush tool, give the clarity a toggle up and perhaps the contrast too and slowly go over any details of the jewellery you want to emphasise. Again working in small increments is better even if it means you go over the same area a few times to get the desired result. This trick is a perfect for anything engraved or embossed (as well as chain pieces) to make the design pop.

Get playful with your crops
Stop thinking in right-angles and start experimenting with cropping on a jaunt! Sometimes finding an interesting cross section that shows more of the piece but is skewed in a playful angle can take an image that was destined for the recycling bin to being one of your favourite captures. This happens for me all the time and it allows you to be more selective with what you include in the frame too.

Get the balance right
A super simple formula but a great one for beginners is to reduce the highlights, bring up the shadows and then accentuate the blacks and whites. I don’t usually like blanked approaches to editing (you’ll never see me anywhere near a set of Presets!) but as a rule of thumb rather than something you cut and paste this is a great way to emphasise a jewellery shot without blowing out those shiny highlights.

Take a second look
Whatever you do, never EVER finish an edit and immediately hit send. And this doesn’t just apply to jewellery this applies to anything. Pause. Make a coffee. Stretch your legs. Even sleep on it for the next week if you have a roomy deadline but just make sure to give those images one more expert glance-over before they arrive in your clients inbox because I guarantee you will spot some adjustments that you didn’t do before that really take the images to the next dimension.