From the course
Jewelry Photography Guides
Fifteen free, in-depth guides on photographing and retouching jewelry, written by Ivan Moshe and drawn from Mastering Jewelry Photography, his online course on lighting, capturing and retouching high-end jewelry. Start with lighting and reflections, then the piece you are photographing, then the camera and the retouching.
Lighting and the set
How light behaves on polished metal, and how a professional set is built around it.
How to Photograph Jewelry: Professional Lighting Techniques
The principles behind every jewelry setup: the size of the source, gradients on metal, black and white cards, enclosing the set, continuous light versus flash, and lighting a black background.
Photographing Reflective Jewelry: How to Control Reflections
Why polished metal shows the room instead of itself, the family of angles, and the mirror and chrome sphere exercises the course uses to teach reflection control.
Jewelry Photography Studio Setup
What a working jewelry set contains: table and surfaces, continuous lights and diffusion, cards and flags, grip equipment, and the tethered workstation.
By piece
Each type of jewelry has its own support, lighting and focus problems. These guides follow the course’s practical chapter.
How to Photograph Rings
Standing the ring up, lighting the band and the stone separately, keeping the whole ring sharp with a focus stack, the standard views and the common problems.
How to Photograph Diamonds
Brilliance, fire and scintillation, why facets need small hard lights while the setting needs diffusion, camera settings, cleaning, and where retouching takes over.
How to Photograph Earrings
Positioning a pair, hiding supports, lighting flat and curved surfaces symmetrically, focus for angled views, and the retouching that finishes the pair.
How to Photograph Necklaces
Hanging versus flat layouts, shaping the chain link by link, lighting a long piece evenly, stacking the pendant and clasp, and placing the piece on its background.
How to Photograph Bracelets
Standing bangles and cuffs, flat-lay chain bracelets, supports, lighting a wide reflective band, focus and the two bracelet retouching approaches.
Camera, lens and capture
Sharpness is decided before Photoshop: by the lens, the aperture, the capture workflow and the focus stack.
Focus Stacking for Jewelry Photography: Full Guide
Why depth of field runs out at macro distances, how to capture a clean stack with a tethered camera, and how Helicon Focus and Photoshop merge it. The free lesson from the course covers the same topic.
Choosing a Lens for Jewelry Photography
Why a macro lens, what focal length does to working distance and perspective, magnification and sensor size, the sharpest aperture and where diffraction starts.
Camera Settings for Jewelry Photography
Manual exposure, base ISO, the sharpest aperture, raw capture, fixed white balance, exposing for metal highlights, and avoiding vibration on the tripod.
Tethered Shooting for Jewelry Photography
Judging reflections and focus at full size, driving the camera from the computer, capturing focus stacks without touching the camera, and organizing the files.
Retouching
The Photoshop side of the workflow, from a calibrated screen to a finished file.
How to Calibrate Your Monitor for Jewelry Photo Editing
What calibration sets, how a hardware calibrator works, setting up the room, and the mistakes that make gold go wrong on screen.
Jewelry Retouching in Photoshop: A Professional Workflow
The professional order of work in Photoshop: selections, cleaning, metal gradients, stones and pearls, adjustment layers, background, sharpening and resizing.
Changing Jewelry Metal Colors in Photoshop
Turning one capture into yellow, rose and white gold versions: masking the metal, shifting hue without touching tone, keeping reflections, and checking against a real sample.
Every guide covers one part of the workflow taught in the course. One complete lesson, Focus Stacking, is free to watch, and the full curriculum lists all 49 lessons across 12 chapters: one-time payment of $99, lifetime access.