Help! Pulling my hair out!

SophieVision · Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:38 pm Post subject: Help! Pulling my hair out!

I'm hoping this will be a simple fix.
I'm helping my parents with their small jewelry business by photoshopping all of the pictures for their website. They can't afford a pro, so they get me instead!

They sell pearls, and I've been having daily arguments with photoshop about how to remove the grayish background and make it pure white.

The problem that I'm up against is threefold:
1. White pearls on a white background have some trouble showing up. I've seen it done, so I know it's possible, but whenever I try with all of the background removal methods I know, it ends up deleting parts of the pearl. We are using a good camera and a light tent with multiple light sources. We have white balanced and tried MANY different colors of backgrounds to see if any could be more efficiently deleted. However, if we use anything other than white as a background when shooting, it shows up as a thin line around the pearls when I delete the background in PS.
The solution I've come up with in the meantime is to photograph the jewelry on a bust, then isolate the bust itself by painstakingly erasing around the edges. This is not ideal---I'd love to have the jewelry floating serenely on that stark white background, maybe even with a little reflection underneath?
2. Shiny metal makes me want to scream. The highlights on glossy silver or gold often show up as 'white' and I'm not sure how to isolate them so that they don't get wiped out along with the background.
3. I have about 4,500 pictures to do. I'm ok with spending some time on them, but the faster the solution, the better.

I am including a photo so you can see what I'm talking about. If you want to see what I've done already, lots of my mediocre efforts are available on www.pearlsinternational.com/shop.
I am relatively new to photoshop, although I have been successfully stumbling through the program for a couple of months and have figured out how to play with the basic tools and levels/contrast/curves etc. to some extent. Thanks in advance for helping me out with this--I REALLY appreciate it! -Sophie

seaco · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 9:46 am Post subject:

If you mean like this I made the background a new layer, then erased around the pearls after that I made a new layer filled it with white then made a drop shadow on the pearls...

If they were photographed on a darker background they would be easier to pick out, do you have one you could put on here?

hawkeye · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:04 am Post subject:

It can certainly be done, but there is no simple way to do it that I can see. This is far from perfect as I didn't spend too much time on it.

You're faced with many problems. I'd suggest photographing against a contrasting color to make selection easier, although you'll pick up colored reflection in the items, that should be relatively easy to remove.

As well as the reflection, I added a little sparkle to it as well.

SophieVision · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:07 pm Post subject: Re: Help! Pulling my hair out!

One of the problems I'm running into with the dark background is that the white pearls are getting washed out in the photos. Like I said, we're not pros, so we're fumbling around with the cameras and light tent and mostly learning by trial and error.
When we photograph white pearls on a dark background, I always get a thin line of black around the pearls that I can't get rid of. What I'm really looking for is a crisp, clean edge. For example, how can I achieve a result like this, and is it really too much to ask: http://www.tiffany.com/Shopping/Item.aspx?fromGrid=1&sku=GRP03199&mcat=148204&cid=287465&search_params=s+5-p+1-c+287465-r+101323352-x+-n+6-ri+-ni+0-t+
Here's the same pair of earrings on both black and white backgrounds. Thanks again for your input!

<a href="http://s914.photobucket.com/albums/ac346/Pearlsintern/?action=view&current=1WCLGYP25QU.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac346/Pearlsintern/1WCLGYP25QU.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s914.photobucket.com/albums/ac346/Pearlsintern/?action=view&current=P1010125.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac346/Pearlsintern/P1010125.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

SophieVision · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:09 pm Post subject: Images

Sorry, I'll try that again

SophieVision · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 1:11 pm Post subject: Images

Second image

hawkeye · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:26 pm Post subject:

Sorry I thought you had already taken all the pictures.

To get a pure white background, you should light the background about 2 stops over the required exposure needed for the jewlery.

In other words put too much light on the background so it will be blown out on the picture.

The reverse would hold true for a black background.

The exposure meter in your camera will attempt to render everything grey, so you'll need to set the camera manually to get it correct.

thehermit · Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 5:39 pm Post subject:

From a purely retouching point of view, if there was not so many JPEG artefacts, a Calculation of two channels would probably lead to a good mask, purely conjecture as I haven't tried it.

As Hawkeye suggests though, getting it right at the shoot stage is the ideal.

magkelly · Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 2:12 pm Post subject:

Pearls are very hard to photograph well for a catalog as they tend to naturally cast weird shadows. They're very reflective. About the only thing worse to photograph is raw crystals. It can be done but it's not easy to do it well unless you have exactly the right set up and it usually takes more than a basic light tent and an average camera.

I've always found that the best solution for pearls and crystals is to use a transparent cube or bust inside the light tent and no background at all. I use transparent fishing wire to suspend the item I am photographing inside the center of the transparent cube. I use a cube with a bunch of small holes in the top to put the wire through so I can tie it off wherever I need to. Lighting it from above and to one side, through a soft filter is usually best, and the nice thing is when you are done there is no background you have to remove. Just a couple of transparent wires, easily gotten rid of.

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