How would you tackle this..?

[stevebri]

Hi All,

Instead of shooting people I recently shot some jewellery and now I need a little help...

On the shot enclosed there is some 'BluTac' holding the ring to the paper background, I want to get rid of it and using the rubber stamp tool just seems a bit crude...

How do you 'experts' do it...?


Many thanks,

Steve

[NZDoug]

Maybe select the ring feathering 10pix or so and invert select then clone.
Pen tools gives the most accurate selection.
Another approach.
The blutac almost looks like a shadow so maybe replace colour.

[NZDoug]

Looking again I think you should also remove the flesh colour on the inner band.
A good way to prepare these rings is solder pins to the band exterior.
Then you can place your background over foamcore.
This works good with cloth backgrounds,
Good luck!

[Tom V]

As an "expert" (which means "once was a drip [ex] under pressure [spurt]," I thought I would throw my eyeballs on this.

For retouching the above image, I first used the Sponge tool to desaturate the blue tac, the flesh-colored reflections, and all other tones other than the gemstone's. Next I used a 100 pixel, 0% hardness, 50% brush to just dab beside the ring to knock back the blob. I removed the thing on the far left, and dust spots on the ring with the Stamp and/or Heal tools.

For shooting rings, I almost always used pins stuck through the background paper into ceiling tile or, in a pinch, FoamCore. The pin head had a dab of tackywax and would hold the ring just under the top. The shaft of the pin was angled away from the lens. I haven't shot jewerly with the S2 (yet). Back in the day, I was usually using an 11x14 view camera with a 24" lens and 48" of bellows. We had to shoot life-size film for the catalogs that the images were going in.

See the tread about Jewelry photography at http://theswampbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1727
I went on and on and on about it in that thread. Photos! Diagrams! Lighting instructions from several members!

[stevebri]

Thanks fella's,

We did about 85 different items and after the first few, I was (with the aid of a sharpe stanleyknife blade) much stricter with the use of blutac...

Thanks Tom about the reflections of the client in his peach t shirt...

He now knows how to hide behind a screen...!


Steve

[stevebri]

One other thing Tom V,

You mentioned the 'old days' with the big game camera's, do try the S2 on jewellery, I used the 105mm AFD and the detail is almost too much really, you can see too much tiny dirt scratched everythinf on the items, and this lens does go to f32 so (apart from some of the earlier shots) you can get decent f to b sharpness using the hyperfocal way.

I used to use a Bronica 645 with a 105mm macro lens to shoot a lot of shoes, belts and bags to fill up the pages in a catalogue, it was tack sharp for a 645 and the S2 plus the Nikkor is great, equally as good as the Bronica and the Hassie 120mm I used also.

Steve