Jewellery image color correction and matching

sorry, I made a mistake in my question. In the last line I meant 'thats how I got my image3.jpg' output

coolvicky21,

I suspect your issues reflect not the adjustments to the image, but the original photography. I see two issues:
One is a distinct difference in sharpness between the two images. While you can use a sharpening filter on the final image, the original must be in perfect focus and taken with a camera/lens combination which are sharp and clear over the depth of field that includes the full ring. In professional jewelry photography for ads, etc, they sometimes even use multiple photos to get the full piece in focus (i.e. one image with the diamond in focus, one with the middle of the ring in focus, and one with the back of the ring in focus, then layered and selectively merged and/or erased).
The second issue is the background to the image. Look at the reflections in the two images. Your image 1 looks like it was taken in with fairly diffuse lighting and distant background, whereas image 2 shows reflections from a background of another material nearby (above and behind) and while the lighting is even, there are a couple of clear point sources which make for nice highlights in the band and the diamond. The background reflection also provides some of the coloring of the band.

Cheers,
LHerrou

thanks for the photography tips. But the problem is that the pictures are not taken by me. They belong to one of the suppliers and borrowed from them. Image2.jpg was taken by me. And also I forgot to mention that I have applied a Unsharp mask filter while getting the image3.jpg output...

Well, image2 is nice work. And yes, I noticed the filter application on Image 3. When making your adjustments to image1, you might want to mask out the background and the shadow, so you preserve those. Then you could add a warming effect, either to the band as a whole, or to the top flat portion. I found Nik Efex warming filter worked well.

Thanks D_Brugge. Your illustrations and explanations are so much in detail and definitely helped me look at all other pictures and understand what you were saying. As correctly mentioned by you, all my product pictures like image2.jpg had the brown filter on them. The thing is that I haven't clicked them by myself. I am web developer and working at an online jewellery company and someone else from the company had clicked the product pictures.

Although I appreciate your detailed description of how the brown color came on the top and how the entire setup would have been, what mainly Im looking for is to match the band rather than give the brown color effect on the top. I am looking to match the silver color. I want the band of the jewellery to look really sharp like the one in Image2.jpg. I understand that the pictures were not taken with perfect focus but is there no other photoshop way to make them sharp like the ones in image2.jpg and give them the silver color effect?

I have attached more pictures for more examples. All ones with image1-*.jpg are the new supplier images which I want to match like the ones with image2-*.jpg. All the image3-*.jpg are some of the best effects that I have tried getting till now on them. To be honest, im more of a web developer with brilliant php and other skills, but less of a photoshop and photographer kinda guy. So what you said didn't make complete sense to me as i'm not too used to such indepth photography techniques. I'll try and read twice-thrice what you have told me and ill let you know how best did it help me. But if someone else can guide me how to get that sharpness and the silver color (im not too keen on getting the brown reflection color) as seen on image2-*.jpg then ill be really grateful
image1-1.jpg
image1-2.jpg
image1-3.jpg
image2-1.jpg
image2-2.jpg
image2-3.jpg
image3-1.jpg
image3-2.jpg
image3-3.jpg

You are pretty limited in what you can do with the originals that have been provided by your supplier - there's just no way to create detail that isn't there in the original. On the other hand, based on the images you've shown here, you've done a GREAT job with them. One thing you might consider is working on the adjustments for color and contrast in a separate layer than your original, and then you can both adjust the transparency of that later (giving more or less of that effect overall, and also you can selectively erase portions of the layer, so if you have over-done it for one part, but it's just right for another, you can erase the part where you feel it's too much. This is also a less destructive approach, since you can turn your layers on and off at will, and see what the effects of different ones would be in combination with one another.

yup ive always made sure that anything I do is in the form of an adjustment layer or a duplicate layer. Thanks for the tip though.

Hello everybody,

Basically I requested freelancers on various site to handle this project for me and asked them to show me sample outputs. I liked one person's output and thought it was fitting the best. But he quoted too high and the person who wants this jewellery images to be done doesn't want to pay so much.

I am attaching the sample he gave. Can anybody tell me that what exact adjustment layers and their settings would he have used?

Thanks
PERFECT.jpg

I completely agree with lherrou here. I've shot jewelry for sears/kmart, and yes I had to layer images to get as I wanted. It is sooo hard to shoot jewelry, I wanted to pull my hair out, LOL. But also, you can't put back what is not there, and you have to explain that to the vendor / client because they never understand why!

I also had to edit like you are doing now all day, every day.

With that said, what you are asking for is an almost impossible fit for all your images. You can't take one setting and apply them to all your images and have them turn out the same. ( for the most part ) You may get away by doing this sometimes, but in my experiences, I've still had to tweak them here and there. This may be why you are having a hard time getting an answer. Not to mention all answers are not going to be the same.  

Here is what I would've done in this situation, and what the freelancer probably has done too...

1.replaced the diamond ( Obviously, cutting and pasting it in, erasing the edges)
2. clipping the ring / diamond with the path tool, including in the shadow below. He selected the image and opened the selective color palette ( Image > adjustments) and added the color in. ( There are so many ways to add the color back in, I would do it 2 - 3 ways until I was happy with the results )
3. He may of opened the levels and moved the darken arrow over a bit, but that's about it.

But again, there are so many ways to achieve this look, it's really a matter of opinion. It's not real easy to achieve, especially if you are not real familiar with the process. <--I know that doesn't help you right? So what I'm saying is, the answers are all above, but it's up to you to just tediously deal the the situation at hand by tweaking. ( Blah! )

Sometimes I would work on an image 30min at a time until it was perfect. This may be the reason the freelancer had to charge so much... I would say so anyhow.

Not sure if this is against the forum policy, but you are more than welcome to contact me if you are in a bind.. But again, all the answers are above.. there are no magic numbers.

crittle1,

Good followup comment :) And yes, you can put that in your comments, you just can't offer to answer questions for anything other than points, or put the email address in the comments (in your profile is fine).

BTW, it looks like you have enough points for Qualified Expert Premium Services, but are still on Free Monthly Trial status, you should be able to click on the Edit button in your profile, and switch over to Expert Premium Services.

Cheers,
LHerrou

Thanks :)!!!!

Hello crittle1,
Yeah I had tweaked and and found that the freelancer who achieved the best result had tweaked with the color balance and made the image darker using the curve adjustment settings:

Color balance settings:
Shadow levels: 0, 16, 0
Midtone Levels: 29,15,-9
Highlight levels: 0,1,0

Curves:
RGB channel: I/p: 123, o/p: 96

Anyways I think the best possible answer was of D_Brugge. His illustrations helped the me best to understand my images and apply the settings and masks accordingly.

Thanks guys for all your help and interest..

Don't forget in the future that you can split points to reflect the effort put in by all involved, which still awarding the accepted answer and the most points to the expert you feel provided the greatest assistance.

Thanks for the grade and the points. Like Iherrou mentioned, you can split points. I feel embarrassed getting them all since there were many good contributions.  I don't worry much about iherrou, he and I contribute many times on the same answer and he takes almost as many points from me as I take from him. As for this new kid, crittle1. I probably need to get points while I can. I have the feeling that he will be taking all of the points in the future.

All of this of course, is in jest. There are a great bunch of folk here at EE.  I don't think any of us here in the graphics zones are in it much for the points anyways. I feel fortunate to be able to learn from almost everyone who adds comments, and I only need enough points each month to keep up my membership.

Thanks again, and best of luck to you.