How to Photograph Jewelry for Retouching: Setup, Focus Stacking and Settings

Clean the piece

Jewelry is shot at high magnification, so dust and fingerprints are huge. Clean the piece before you shoot, handle it with gloves or tweezers and use a blower to remove dust between frames.

Every speck you remove on set is a speck the retoucher does not have to remove in every frame of a stack.

Light and reflections

Polished metal and stones mirror everything around them, including you and your camera. Use soft, diffused light, such as a light tent or large diffusers, and use black or white cards to control what the metal reflects.

Aim for clean, even reflections rather than perfect ones. A retoucher can tidy reflections, but cannot invent detail that was never captured.

Focus stacking

At close range the depth of field is extremely shallow, so one frame cannot keep the whole piece sharp. The usual solution is focus stacking: you take a series of frames, each focused a little further along the piece, and combine them. A typical stack runs from 15 to 40 or more frames.

Use a tripod, a macro lens and a focusing rail if you have one. Choose an aperture where your lens is sharpest (often around f/8 to f/11, but check your own lens), keep the exposure fixed and do not move the piece or the camera during the series.

A note on watches

Watch crystals are curved, so they catch the camera and the room. Shoot at a slight angle if the design allows, use a black card or tunnel to cut reflections and keep the dial clean.

We can remove glare and dust and keep bezels and dials crisp, but a clean capture makes a better result.

Deliver the frames

Send RAW files, grouped by piece and in the order shot. Add a note with the metals and stones involved, a reference for the color you want and where the images will be used. Tell us if the pieces are unreleased and you need an NDA.

Jewelry projects are quoted individually, and you get a personal quote within 12 hours.

See our jewelry and watch retouching →