Jewelry Photo Editing Tips

© by Rena Klingenberg; all rights reserved

Photo editing is an important step for properly sizing your jewelry images and giving them a professional-quality appearance.

Most image editing programs make it easy and fun to control the final appearance of your pictures.

Jewelry Photo Editing Software

Fortunately this software doesn't have to be expensive - and there are even many free online tools for editing your jewelry images.

Earring picture cropped using an image editor,
so that the jewelry fills the frame

Although Adobe PhotoShop, which is loaded with incredible features, is probably the industry standard for photo editing, it's also expensive. And unless you're really a photography pro, many of PhotoShop's features will probably go unused by you - I know I wouldn't understand or use most of them!

Photo Editing Programs
I've Used and Loved Include:

For PC computers -

• Jasc's Paintshop Pro.

For Mac computers -

• Pixelmator


• The "Preview" tool that came loaded on my Mac - in addition to letting you preview files, it's also a surprisingly useful image editor.

Free online image editing tools - I haven't used these myself, but I've heard good things about them:

• Gimp


• Picasa


• PhotoScape

Your computer may even have come with an image editor in its original software bundle; if you aren't sure, check under "programs" or "applications" on your computer's hard drive.

Gimp Photo Editing Tutorial

See jewelry artist Stephenie Gardella's step-by-step Gimp photo editing techniques for better jewelry photographs.

Stephenie's generous tutorial will get you up and running quickly, especially if you're not sure how to use Gimp or other image editors.

Tips for Editing Jewelry Images

Okay, now that you have your software, it's time to edit your photo.

Open the jewelry photograph you've saved to disk or hard drive.

If the picture seems to need a bit more cropping, use your image editor's cropping feature till you get the photo the way you want.

One of the most important things to remember when photographing jewelry is to be sure your jewelry fills the final version of the photo.

If you'll be using more than one shot of this piece of jewelry, consider featuring a small area of this image (e.g., the most colorful part of the stone with a bit of the setting against it, or the most exquisite part of the bead work). Adjust your cropping borders till you have a neat, artistic, closeup view of a small area of the piece.

Your viewers will think you've used a fancy zoom lens to treat them to a mega-closeup!

Image of Maasai neckwear, cropped to show
a closer view of the intricate beadwork

Use the photo editing software's image resize feature to make the final image whatever size is best for how you plan to use the photograph. For example:

• For posting photos to forums, 200 to 300 pixels is a good size range for both height and width.


• For websites, blogs, and eBay listings, 350 to 400 pixels is a good size range for both height and width.


• For online storefronts such as Etsy, 1000 pixels is a good size range for both height and width, since many storefronts automatically create smaller thumbnail images that click to your large image for closer viewing.

Also experiment with your editor's "sharpen" feature, since sometimes resizing an image can make it less focused.

However, on some image editors, the "sharpen" feature can result in a grainy look - so try it out and see what you think. If "sharpen" makes your image grainy, try the editor's "unsharpen mask" feature.

In spite of your best efforts to clean the scanner glass before photographing jewelry, your scanned jewelry image may still have a bit of lint, dust, or hair in it. Use the photo editing software's scratch remover to make these quickly disappear.

Other adjustments to experiment with when editing jewelry photos:

• exposure


• brightness


• contrast


• color balance


• saturation


• temperature.

Warning: Don't Over-Enhance
Your Jewelry Photos

As you edit your photo, be careful not to over-enhance the jewelry's appearance so that the photo doesn't really represent what your piece actually looks like.

Understandably, customers get very disgruntled about that! You don't want to be known as a jeweler who misrepresents your products.

Your objective is just to make your picture as clean, clear, and appealing as possible while accurately representing the appearance of the piece. No more and no less.

Saving Your Jewelry Images

Always be sure to save the original, unedited image. You may want to make different edits on this photo later.

Then, when you finish editing your image, save it as a new file in jpg format.

Now your new jpg file of the photo is ready to use!

If the finished photo file turns out really super, you may want to write down the settings and adjustments that worked well for you, to help make photographing jewelry and photo editing a snap in the future!

Good luck! Have fun, and enjoy the beautiful pictures of your jewelry that you get with a little practice in photo editing!