Using a Scanner to Photograph Jewelry - What to Do About Dark Photos?

Thank you so much for your helpful article on using a scanner to photograph jewelry. I was about to give up on getting good pictures of my jewelry with a digital camera after spending hours and hours trying (and failing) to get good photos.

The scanner is so much easier and foolproof!

I do have one question, though. Sometimes my scanned jewelry photos turn out really dark. How can I prevent that?

Thanks so much for all of your help!

Answer:

Adjusting the Darkness in Scanned Jewelry Photos

© by Rena Klingenberg; all rights reserved

Thanks for letting me know how much my article helped you!

With my scanner, I found that some colors of jewelry cause the scanner to under-expose the picture, making the entire shot very dark.

Black or very dark colored jewelry, or pieces that have strong tone contrasts - such as black onyx with white pearls - seem to have the most trouble.

On my scanner, I found that using a cloth or paper background in a sort of medium-to-light neutral color, such as pale gray, light blue, pale khaki, etc. usually helps with that.

If you find that some jewelry photos turn out much darker than others, see if you can pinpoint whether it's your darker or lighter colored pieces that have this problem - and then experiment with pale or neutral backgrounds for these pieces, to see if you can find the magic formula for your particular scanner.

Or possibly your darker jewelry needs a medium-to-dark background to get the scanner to give it more light.

In addition, some scanners have a variety of options you can play with before scanning - such as color, brightness, contrast, etc. See if your "pre-scan" mode has any settings you can experiment with - or check your scanner's manual for info on settings you can change.

Also, work your images with your photo editing software. Play around with all kinds of features on your photo editor. Especially try adjusting the contrast. Changing the contrast to separate the jewelry from the background and decrease overall darkness can make a huge difference in how the final picture looks.

See my article on Photographing Jewelry with a Scanner

See more tips for Photographing Jewelry