Photographing Bracelets

pariskate

Thanks Fay, will try that

RFW

Sarah-Jane wrote: »

Paint isn't that good for editing photo's, I find the colours blur too easily on saving, OP would be better off using a photo editing program, like photoshop or paint shop pro, they'd look more professional too, and if used regularly are well worth the money

I know Paint isn't good, I was going on the assumption that OP had no software and was really recommending Paint for cropping photo to centre the bracelet once photographed. Don't use it for editing the colours!

As a Money Saving tip, you can probably get a full program of a decent photo editing software on the front of some related magazines (if not able to download a free one from somewhere!).

joyofx

Try using GIMP of you don't have access to photoshop etc. Its open source, with similar capabilities but has the added benifit of being free as opposed to £500 for photoshop cs3. (http://www.gimp.org/windows/)

Also, for photographing jewellery a light tent is always a good idea. This is a fabric box that allows you light an item evenly. They can be found on ebay for about a tenner.

One other tip for jewellery is to take the pics at braketed EV values - as sometimes the internal metering on cameras don't do a great job - but if you have several pix taken at the same time then you can choose the best one.

Many photo editing programs have a sharpening filters included - if you have an option for "Unsharp Mask" use this - it will give a lot better results than the standard shapening setting.

Lastly, when you come to prepare the photos for ebay - don't make them too large - i would say about 400 - 500 px would be the best. Make sure that it's in JPEG format and try to keep the filesize below about 60k by changing the quality setting.

I spent 2-3 years photographing and enhancing pix of jewellery for the web and at the end of the day, there is no perfect answer - what works for a bracelet will not work for a ring. Trial, error and practice are the best ways of descovering what works for you.

Tabby_Kitten_2

Thanks for all the help, from the sound of it the best thing for me to do is go away and have a play.