A Ring Makeover

[SteveB2005]

Hey again Nancy. I wanted to give your ring a go, so I did some tweaks. I desaturated the ring because it had a sepia color cast on my monitor. I used smart blur and some gradients with added noise to keep a bit of texture. Used the smudge tool to punch the lights and darks and to blur the reflections. The diamonds were a bit distorted, so I couldn't do anything with them. Spent about 20 minutes or so. Could tighten up the edges when I have time, but had fun trying it out. I wish I had a big bag of rings and costume jewelry to practice on. regards steveb

[Nanls]

Originally Posted by SteveB2005

To Nancy. I like what you did, cleaning up the ring. It looks like silver. I also like the angle that the ring was shot.Are you using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet? Are you retouching 100's of these? If so, when do you get a chance to breathe? How long do you spend on average with a retouch? Just picking another retouchers brain who also does rings, etc. regards steveb

Hi Steve,
Thank you for the nice comments. And I like what you did with the ring's edges... looks much better.Was negotiating to do around 300 of these poorly shot rings, however, after doing the first 10, it was obvious that it would be less expensive for them to reshoot, then pay to have them retouched...all of the gems where that bad and we were going to have to do the old "cut and paste" thing. ... it was too time intensive, since it was for print, not for the web- a case of a webmaster trying to pass as a photographer... and then hoping the retoucher could create magic... I am not a photographer, however, from reading the post here at retouchpro, it is my understanding that shooting jewelery is hard enough, even when you know what you are doing and have the right equipment. Are you a photographer also? I am using Photoshop CS and a wacom tablet for retouching.

[SteveB2005]

Hello Nanis. Wow, 300 rings to retouch from the original photography is, IMHO, too much to ask of any experienced retoucher. Some people think that a substandard jewelry photo can appear as a miracle image after the retoucher has spent an hour trying to do the near impossible on one ring! I do all my own photography and retouching. I get lucky sometime and get a decent jewelry shot. I have state of the art high end digital gear and lighting which helps of course am I'm still learning new things to make it the best it can be. I knew of a color expert that would have a transparency rescanned on a million dollar drum scanner if the color or resolution was off at least 10%. From the look of the original ring photo you had to retouch, I would say that that was off about 60% and would have to be reshot beforing any retouching could save it for print or web. Regards steveb