This question is addressed to Ant, because he is active in the professional retouching trade, but of course, anyone here is free to respond.

There are more questions and inquiries from photographer and retouchers here and other forums about learning jewelry retouching techniques. As I study many high end watch magazines as well as hi-rez fine jewelry ads in the big fashion magazines, it is apparent that jewelry, no matter how well it is shot has to be retouched to get that slick, blemish free look. I photograph jewelry and do some of the necessary retouching myself, but it is very labor intensive and time consuming. Honestly, some of the retouching takes way too long for me to do it and I'm always working and learning new and faster ways to optimize my time constraint.

Is there anything you can pass along here about learning faster and better workflow techniques about high end watch and jewelry retouching?

Thanks Ant, I always enjoy reading your critiques and posts

Steve

Shoot multiple captures changing you DOF so you can get everything in focus, just don't move the camera. Use fill cards on some captures to remove odd reflections and composite all of the captures to get your "base" image. From there I always isolate the jewelry from the background then isolate golds, silvers and stones to be worked as separate elements. Usually involves some illustration along with traditional retouching techniques.

Shoot multiple captures changing you DOF so you can get everything in focus, just don't move the camera. Use fill cards on some captures to remove odd reflections and composite all of the captures to get your "base" image. From there I always isolate the jewelry from the background then isolate golds, silvers and stones to be worked as separate elements. Usually involves some illustration along with traditional retouching techniques.

Yes I agree, a good jewelry shot may take 4-5 shots of the same product, different focus stacks, reflectors, etc, mask it all together and produce as perfect image as possible. Dealing with a small macro item like a ring can involve a dramatic shooting workflow and then an extra retouch tweak if the image is quality enough out of the camera to make it worthwhile. Great retouching technique won't save a lousy image, just a waste of time.

I find the hardest part in retouching jewelry is getting the cleanest, roundest curves to pop with darks and lights and mixing in the gradients and airbrushing to get the most pop and sharpness, eliminate muddy surfaces, etc.

Thanks steve