White background

A simple white background surrounding a piece of jewelry, it looks like it should be easy to do. With some methods it can be. With others, which often look better, it can get a bit more complicated. Believe it or not it can also depends on how white do you want your white background? Whitish is very different then absolute pure white. Do you want a shadow or a reflection under the piece of jewelry? Do you plan to build a collage out of several pieces to form a new image? Is the piece of jewelry itself white? All of these can influence how a piece of jewelry is photographed to have a simple white background surrounding a piece of jewelry.

Most of the times what I find people are looking for is an absolute pure white background. You cannot photograph a shiny metal piece of jewelry and have it come out with a pure white background because the piece of jewelry is just to darn shiny. You would think you could just stand the piece on some really white paper take shot and be done but in-fact most pieces of polished metal jewelry reflect a great deal more light back at the camera then does white paper. This leaves what we thought was white paper looking some shade of light gray. You would think you could just pour some more light on the paper or put it on shinier surface like a mirror or blast light from underneath it and all of these can be done but it leave the piece with an unnatural look as the overly bright background light wraps around the jewelry and makes the sides of the piece too light. So how do you get a natural look, a good look for a piece of shiny metal jewelry to have a pure white background? Photoshop. To create this look it is a two-part process. The first step is to use all of the creative and technical care I use in all of the photos I do to create a great photo of the piece of jewelry showing metal form and stones looking fantastic on what turns out to be a light gray background. The second step you go into Photoshop select the piece from the background and drop the background to pure white. So then you have your piece of jewelry on a pure white background and it looks great and it looks natural. This second step is what also makes offering a pre-priced service impossible. Taking the photo is going to be the same for almost all types of jewelry. So for that part the pricing is the same as my classic set up. The time it take to select a piece out in Photoshop is going to very for every type of jewelry and that needs to get billed by the hour. So a simple 18K gold band is almost an auto process to select so not much cost there. A multi strand pearl necklace where every pearl has to be hand selected from the whitish background, that is going to take awhile and cost a bit.

So if you are looking for that white background look for your jewelry photos I can do that. The cost? It all depends on how white you want your background.