HELP!! Retouching Jewelry

[noxish]

ahhh the ever frustrating jewelry post production stuff......

ok first off i'm usually alright with this kinda thing but having a nightmare day and thought "right, time to hit retouch pro and ask for help".

Me dilema at the moment may sound really easy to solve but I'm having massive issues cutting out the backgrounds. They were all shot on white velvet.

Things I've tried and have all left me shouting inappropriate words at my poor computer....
* masking, via normal way and liquid mask plugin
*pen tool to create a path (only learnt how to use it today, so didn't help the frustration level)
*hand brushing on white/ erasing/ turning to black and white to make it easier to grab a selection.
*colour range to try and grab a selction that way

My biggest issue is while most of this looks ok, because I have lovley soft shadows under the ring I can't seperate the jewelry from said shadows and background without it looking slightly silly.

Any help and is hugely appreciated!!!

[noxish]

also any help with reflections (putting them in under the ring) and creating more definite shadows owuld be muchly appreciated

[AronPeterson]

I'm not sure what you meant by reflection. If you wanted a reflection you should have shot the ring on a reflective surface.

Anyway.

The way I would approach this.

1. Rotate and centre the ring.
2. Mask the ring.
3. Turn the mask into a selection.
4. Fill the selection with white so that you only have the ring left in the image.
5. Use the history brush set to the history state two steps back. Set the brush to about 40% opacity and 20% hardness. Restore the ring's shadows with the history brush.
6. Use the patch or healing took to remove any defects in the shadows.

[noxish]

well duh.... if i had unscratched acrylic at the time I would have used it.
doesn't matter i just ctr+j'd it and transformed/lowered opacity and added blur. seemed to look alright.

as for masking, I have been. And yes using a lower opacity brush to work it back in.

point is it still looks off. i've found using selective colour and boosting the whites elimenates the majority of problems with the back ground and i've gone from there. I have over 40 rings with 4 shots per image to cut out, was just looking for a) a new way to do it and/or b) something faster than masking it.

if anyone is interested i gave fluid mask a whirl (the plugin) which looks great in their tutorials but really doesn't like white thru to black tones without any colour space to use to build significant shapes and forms so you can easily mask. could be lack of use tho, will investigate more.

anyway at least u replied AronPeterson, so thanks.

any new ideas welcomed!!

[noxish]

here's my cleaned up version.... i think it may be the bottom lip of the ring doesnt look like its sitting upright.... any ideas on how to change would be lovely

(havent touched up shadows and other stuff more concerned with the angles etc)

[AronPeterson]

A scratched surface is easy to fix with patching and healing. You should have used it.

The cleaned version doesn't look right unless that was a rough version. It looks like the ring is stood upright on a reflective surface, in which case the shadows shouldn't be there. You might have to choose if you want shadows or reflection, not both. I never use both when I'm doing images for Armani or Acqua Di Parma, etc otherwise I would never find work again.

I would also not use a blur on the reflection. Keep the whole image sharp, straight, clean and simple.

[Wolfman]

My try...... I used the pen tool to separate the background and made it white.
Then duplicated the image and dragged the ring in the duplicate over to original and lowered the opacity of the dragged layer to about 20% and offset it slightly to create a faded reflection. I also included another one preserving the soft shadows.

[Kenh]

I thought I would give it a try. I did a quick (sloppy, still learning) pen selection and replaced the background with a gradient. Did not do much else other then adding the reflection.

[noxish]

thanks wolfman!!! that's so much better, yeah i'm not going to bother trying to make it look like its standing up.

i like the reflection underneath and the soft shadow look!

cheers for your help!

[DJWaxx]

To lift the images from the background, I use a service.

There are several on the net, most of which would silo a piece like this for under $3/pc.

[lkroll]

Used circular selections for the extraction and then did some play (most won't like the play though; lol).

[luvmeeh]

hi ikroll...nice job!how did u do the second picture? i just want to know how did u do with the ring. thanks

[lkroll]

Glad you liked the result. I created a ruby seamless texture and applied it to the background. Click link below for more details and also for the texture. Used GIMP's Supernova filter for the light and then applied drop shadow on the ring.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=29938558