Whether you are photographing jewelry or landscapes, your photos are only as good as your photo software. For amazing photos, you will need much more than the free software that either came with your computer or you can get free on the Internet. Free software allows you to do little more than crop, adjust levels a little and cover red eye. Premium software allows you to do much more.
There are several on the market you can purchase for various prices. Adobe PhotoShop is the best, in my opinion, but can be very costly (about $700) and take a lot of time to learn. A less expensive alternative is Corel PaintShop Pro, which is much more affordable (less than $100) and can handle basic photo editing tasks and then some. It does take some time to learn the program, but I'm sure it is not half as long as Adobe. I personally use Corel at the present time, although Adobe is definitely on my wish list! There is many more out on the market and I am not getting paid to plug these brands, I am only using these two as a matter of example.
To show you the key components of a photo editing software you are going to want to look for, I will take you through a basic photo editing session with my copy of Corel PaintShop Pro.
When photographing your piece, it is essential that you take several images of the same "pose" using different f-stops or other manual settings your camera will allow you to do. Some cameras have what they call 'program' which shows on the visible meter as -0.3, -0.7, 0, 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, etc. The following sample shows the different settings I used for the photo we are going to be fixing. Notice how each sample gets darker and darker.
I ended up choosing the first one in the series as, in my opinion, it is easier to work with lighter photos than darker photos. It seems that it is easier to go darker and clarify that it is to brighten up a dark photo.
We will be taking this photo and seeing what we can do to tweak things up a little and I will be listing them is steps as I go along:1) Crop
The first thing you want to do is to crop the photo. Etsy prefers squared images, so I cropped the photo to 1728 x 1728 pixels. By the way, I always work in pixels, not inches. It might be easier for you to get into the habit of that.
2) Color Balance / White Balance
The next thing you want to do is to even out your color balance. Remember a few postings ago I mentioned something about your Smart White Balance on your camera? Very important to use it if you have it. My camera does have it, but it doesn't work very well, so I have to manually fix that issue in my photo editing software. In the sample below, there is just too much blue in the first original untouched but cropped picture. The sample next to it shows how I added a little bit more warmth to the picture to even out the blues. Notice how the dimensions change after that fix.
3) LevelsThe left sample is the corrected color balance sample, but it needs a little more clarification and depth as it just looks too washed out. To correct this, I used my levels setting found in 'brightness/contrast'. Corel allows you to either let the program figure out the right levels or use the sliders to create your own level fix. The sample to the right shows how the program chose the usable levels for me. I could have tweaked the light, medium and dark sliders to fine-tune it more, but for this purpose, I thought the suggested level fix was plenty. The earrings to the right appear to pop out more from the background, whereas the image on the left appears more flat.
4) SharpnessThe final routine function you are going to want to do is to fiddle with the sharpness unmask. This function doesn't really mess with the sharpness of the image as much as it adds luminance to key areas of the photo. It is a real saver if you do not have a specific light to add twinkle to your pieces. I know you really can't tell in the photo below...if they were bigger, you would see a real difference. The image on the left shows the earrings before sharpness unmask was applied, whereas the one on the right shows after. The appear more real and more dimensional...like you want to reach out and grab it from your monitor. Most free software programs do not have this function and I believe it is a very important one.
This is not an exhaustive list as there are other key things you can do, like tweaking the hues of the photo or fixing faded colors, removing things from the photo you don't want there. How many times have you photographed a piece to find that your best photo had a piece of lint that shows up! Premium photo software allows you to remove the piece without altering what is behind the lint.As you can see, we took the first photo in the series as seen on the left and turned it into the much better photo on the right. Again, this fix was accomplished just using basic functions so you can image that there is so much more you can do to fix your photos.
If you are going to make the investment and have the resources available to you, I recommend you get Adobe. If you are on a tight budget (as am I), Corel will get the job done until you can afford Adobe. Start sticking those pennies away! The most important thing is that you spend time with the manual and really learn what your software can do. There are tons and tons of tutorials online for both Adobe and Corel products, so there is no excuse outside of lack of time, and in that case, schedule little learning sessions for yourself throughout the week. Your premium photo editing software is not going to serve you well if you don't know how to use it!Thank you so much for your patience with this series and I hope you learned something!
