Jewelry Photo Dust Cleanup

Why black velvet shows everything

Black velvet makes gold and diamonds stand out, and it also collects every fibre and speck of dust. In this macro photo of a six-prong solitaire ring, the pad is covered in white lint, the inside of the band carries fingerprints, and a grain of dust sits on the table below. At close range those marks look bigger than the ring detail the designer wanted to show.

Who uses this

• Independent jewelry designers launching a new piece on their own store
• Makers who send digital catalogs to clients choosing an engagement ring
• Anyone who photographs rings or earrings on velvet and cannot keep the pad clean while shooting

How the edit is handled

A human editor removes the lint, dust and fingerprints and keeps the velvet looking like velvet, matte with its soft pile. The ring is checked at 200 percent: the six prongs, the gold color and the stone's facets should still match your original. In this example the cluttered metal shelf behind the pad is also replaced with a plain dark gray backdrop, so nothing behind the ring competes with it.

The stone is never made larger, cleaner or a different color. Its size, color and clarity stay what the real piece has, and the natural character of the ring, such as small marks of making, is not retouched away. Fine facet reflections can shift a little when a photo is rebuilt, so tell us if the stone is the main point of the picture and we will check it more closely against the original.

What to upload

Send the original full-size photo. If you have a second shot from the same session, send it too, so we can compare how the stone looks without the lint around it.

Private: recreated on our own images, not customer photos

The before/after shown here is recreated on images created or licensed for this site — never a real customer's photo. Your upload is seen only by the editor working on it, and the edit comes with free revisions within 14 days of delivery if anything needs adjusting.