Manipulation of gem photos

[jordyonbass]

2) Gemstones and especially pearls are extremely difficult to photograph. The only sure way to ever really know what you're getting and if you'll be happy with it is to look in person, or have a trusted person/vendor/appraiser, etc. with a good pair of eyes review possible purchases for you. They should know your standards and expectations. Even still, there is no substitute for seeing something with your own eyes.

Firm agreement on this point, hence why most of us vendors will offer exchanges or refunds for loose gem purchases.

 

[molinePDG]

Anything slightly more accessible? I feel a bit strange getting subscription software my work pays for and using it to analyse gem photos (also bonus points if it runs on my phone so I can be maximally lazy ).

PS has a mobile version but I will be honest in saying I'm not familiar with it. It's just a standard RGB color sampler, I think -- shoot, there used to be a Chrome extension that did it.

 

[qubitasaurus]

PS has a mobile version but I will be honest in saying I'm not familiar with it. It's just a standard RGB color sampler, I think -- shoot, there used to be a Chrome extension that did it.

That would be super cool .

Lol I am all thumbs, and pretty clumsy. So I doubt my aptitude for driving photoshop off my phone. I'd probably be swearing profusely at it within minutes of installing it.

 

[yssie]

Firm agreement on this point, hence why most of us vendors will offer exchanges or refunds for loose gem purchases.

Oh.
Opals are the most obdurate gemstones.
Just impossible to make the camera output what the eyes see.
My respect and condolences to y'all opal seller people.

 

[jordyonbass]

Oh.
Opals are the most obdurate gemstones.
Just impossible to make the camera output what the eyes see.
My respect and condolences to y'all opal seller people.

My wife does our photography and you have no idea how many times I've heard a guttural 'Aaaaagghhh!!' come from the office where our photo booth is located

I mentioned this in Kenny's thread about photo manipulation, but the best way to describe it is that you're trying to capture in a photo with one lens what your brain is seeing in HD video with two lenses. At least, that's how it was described to me.

 

[LilAlex]

I mentioned at the beginning how color-temperature affects the appearance of gems. A handful of folks here were appalled that I would "accuse" vendors of doing this.

Below is my extreme example from my original post, where I manipulated the color temperature:



This pair below is from the Instagram of a vendor who is constantly recommended on this forum. Do you see the pattern? Do you recognize the background? Do you see even the same tiny defect in the background? Do you want me to "out" this vendor?



Below is another pair from an Instagrammer with 70K followers who sells six-figure gems. Gorgeous photos all day long. Do you see the pattern? You might think at first that it's a pewter scoop on the left and a brass one on the right -- but look closely at the subtle serrations on the right edge of the scoop in each photo. It's the same scoop!



So my ridiculously over-the-top example at the top of this post with my own stones was actually pretty conservative compared to these high-profile vendors. It took me less than five minutes to find these examples and I could do this all night. You can lie with the best equipment in the world or with the cheapest. Some photographers think that the cost of their camera is a mark of excellence or integrity. It's not.

Again and again (and even on this thread!) I see it written that "if the background is white, it must be right." That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Below (taken from up-thread), you can see that any number of manipulations can be done without impacting the white balance. That was most of the purpose of my post. And that false assumption has led folks to torture their images and pretend that they are "real" as long as the background stays white.



I don't care who any of you buy from and, like with wine or music, I'm sure there are folks who will never discern these nuances.

Color is the product in colored gems. I feel that it needs to be represented accurately and it makes me sad and, well, horrified that I seem to be in the minority here. In real estate, the product is zip code and square footage. Some realtors Photoshop in cloudy blue skies and I don't care -- but they are not allowed to tweak the zip code or add an extra level to a home or digitally re-site it in the middle of a 40,000-acre ranch. Manipulating the color of a gem to create an appearance that is better than real life is the same as lying about the zip code or square footage of a house, imo.

There is a reason that models' portfolios include Polaroids. Maybe it's time to do the same for gems.

 

[Lilith112]

Color is the product in colored gems. I feel that it needs to be represented accurately and it makes me sad and, well, horrified that I seem to be in the minority here. In real estate, the product is zip code and square footage. Some realtors Photoshop in cloudy blue skies and I don't care -- but they are not allowed to tweak the zip code or add an extra level to a home or digitally re-site it in the middle of a 40,000-acre ranch. Manipulating the color of a gem to create an appearance that is better than real life is the same as lying about the zip code or square footage of a house, imo.

I think you're missing the point. While photoshop can certainly be used in a deceptive way-- and I definitely have had that head-scratching moment when I compare a gem to its picture-- your argument seems to be that any photoshop/alteration is fundamentally wrong. Which is a flawed argument given that gems are notoriously difficult to accurately photograph. Plenty of users have in the past noted that their cameras are incapable of completely capturing their gem's IRL beauty-- mine certainly can't. Hence why I tweak my photos-- to get closer to what I see IRL.

Based on many users' positive experiences with Enhoerning as well as her honest descriptions of her gemstones, I'd guess that many people find her pictures, altered or not, to be true to life which is the most important part when shopping online for most people.

 

[chrono]

Manipulating the color of a gem to create an appearance that is better than real life is the same as lying about the zip code or square footage of a house, imo.

I agree with this. I, and many others here, have the most difficult time trying to photograph gems accurately. Sometimes it looks better, and sometimes it looks worse than what our eyes see. I expect vendors experience the same. I don't know the vendor you are referring to, nor have any experience with him/her so I cannot comment on the gem photo accuracy. Tweaking to make it match as closely to what the eye sees in acceptable. Tweaking to make it better, no.

 

[voce]

I think you're missing the point. While photoshop can certainly be used in a deceptive way-- and I definitely have had that head-scratching moment when I compare a gem to its picture-- your argument seems to be that any photoshop/alteration is fundamentally wrong. Which is a flawed argument given that gems are notoriously difficult to accurately photograph. Plenty of users have in the past noted that their cameras are incapable of completely capturing their gem's IRL beauty-- mine certainly can't. Hence why I tweak my photos-- to get closer to what I see IRL.

Based on many users' positive experiences with Enhoerning as well as her honest descriptions of her gemstones, I'd guess that many people find her pictures, altered or not, to be true to life which is the most important part when shopping online for most people.

Just because a vendor tweaks an image, doesn't mean they're doing it to show you pics that are better than the gem is irl. A number of vendors do it to more accurately portray the gem's irl color, which is nothing nefarious as you're assuming it is. Yes, the color balance is off, but sometimes that's what's needed to have the color of the gem show up right, particularly when it's an emerald or true red gem. I wholeheartedly agree with Lilith's points above. So long as the vendor can be trusted and has a good return policy, I don't fear whether or not an online image has been manipulated or not (shooting under special lighting is just as bad even if the image is taken using RAW) and will just return the stone if it was misrepresented. I've bought all my gemstones from online, and it's more likely that certain inclusions jump out at me more than it appears in the vendor photo, than vendors represent the gem color inaccurately. I could care less whether the backdrop for the gems is rendered correctly, so long as the color of the gem I'm seeing irl is about the same or better than its color in the photo.

 

[qubitasaurus]

I dont know about one set of photos, but the other I would guess that the sapphires look awful under yellow light. But the bowl picks it right up and reflects it. Although again I dont really know -- just putting a possibility out there. Sorry cant seem to get the solo image so guess I am including more than is appropriate.

Suspect these two are the same bowl in relatively similar lighting.

 

[LilAlex]

Suspect these two are the same bowl in relatively similar lighting.

They are not. Look closely at my pair of images and look closely at your pair of images.

Interesting that the defenders of these vendors' practices are comfortable exposing them. I tried to avoid that.

It's also mpressive how quickly this thread and a parallel one went from "how dare you accuse vendors of manipulating" to "of course vendors manipulate and we like it!"

There is an obvious conflict and few vendors will stop at just "accurately" representing the stone because the financial conflict of interest is so staggeringly large. If you know anything about conflict of interest or behavioral finance, you will understand the psychology of self-delusion that many vendors engage in in "accurately" portraying their wares. If I spent an hour with any of those images above that I posted from those two vendors, I doubt that I could make them look any more appealing. Are all IG gems the best in the world, whether they cost $500 or $500,000? I doubt it.

Note that this is a pretty new phenomenon over the past decade; it had just been the practice of a handful of unscrupulous eBay vendors.

 

[Lilith112]

They are not. Look closely at my pair of images and look closely at your pair of images.

Interesting that the defenders of these vendors' practices are comfortable exposing them. I tried to avoid that.

It's also mpressive how quickly this thread and a parallel one went from "how dare you accuse vendors of manipulating" to "of course vendors manipulate and we like it!"

...oof, the point just completely flew over your head didn't it. Let me break it down again. No one is denying that there are vendors who deliberately post deceptive pictures. That's why there's even a thread where we post vendor pictures alongside our pictures of gemstones. That being said, there's also plenty of vendors-- even consumers like me-- who edit pictures to make it match the IRL color/saturation. That, for most of us, is okay.

Moreover, regarding Enhoerning specifically, TONS of PS-ers have purchased from her and had wonderful shopping experiences. There's a lot of threads which compare Pricescope members' pictures to her pictures; the IRL pictures look better more than a few times.

Like I don't get why you're misunderstanding what we're saying here. Like what point are you trying to make now? That you know so much better than us, and we need to be enlightened?

 

[voce]

It's also mpressive how quickly this thread and a parallel one went from "how dare you accuse vendors of manipulating" to "of course vendors manipulate and we like it!"

There is an obvious conflict and few vendors will stop at just "accurately" representing the stone because the financial conflict of interest is so staggeringly large.

I don't remember when this thread was about "how dare you accuse vendors of manipulating." I remember when it was "LOL you assumed I was a vendor and that amused me."

You come off as awfully presumptuous when you use behavioral finance to justify your assumptions. Vendors vary, as do people, is what Kenny might say, and I agree with.

In the case of Enhoerning, who Fedexes stones overnight without charging shipping and accepts refunds without question, overly adjusting the pictures to be better than irl will result in more costly return shipping. Her prices and policies are such that customers will definitely return her gems if they're not completely happy. So the fact that you cannot make the images look any more appealing, and her customers, myself included, buy from her without unhappily exposing her photos as unrealistic, speaks more to the fact that the gems she gets are high end gems that are already ideal in coloring, than the point that you seem to be trying to make, that we PriceScopers are just like other consumers who are stupid and will defend certain vendors no matter what.

FWIW, I have returned two stones from Enhoerning, neither of which had inaccurate color representation, both of which I returned because my eyes and mind had latched on to some inclusion that was disclosed and that had made me not able to love the stone.

Color is the product in colored gems. I feel that it needs to be represented accurately and it makes me sad and, well, horrified that I seem to be in the minority here.

Color is the product in colored gems. As someone who buys colored gems exclusively and uses diamond for melee only, I also feel that it needs to be represented accurately. You are not in the minority here.

What you are in the minority for, however, is in assuming that in manipulating the image digitally, vendors are representing their gems less accurately. I happen to agree with what Kenny and Jordy said in the other thread that in order to represent the colors accurately compared to what the eye sees, for certain gems you DO need to digitally manipulate to have the color represented MORE accurately than what the camera captures as RAW.

To protect yourself as a colored stone consumer, it's more important to look for a favorable, rock solid return policy than to be nitpicky about going "aha" photo manipulation with glee and spite every time you see it.

 

[yssie]

To protect yourself as a colored stone consumer, it's more important to look for a favorable, rock solid return policy than to be nitpicky about going "aha" photo manipulation with glee and spite every time you see it.

This.


@LilAlex, What we are saying is that your portrayal of what you perceive to be truisms and reality checks leaves much to be desired, in terms of both fact-checking and presentation.

You could be an asset to this forum, if you want to be.

 

[Rfisher]

It’s ok.
We all assume things at times.

‘Absolutes’ are tricky

It’s just do you double down or choose to do something else?

 

[Cerulean]

I mentioned at the beginning how color-temperature affects the appearance of gems. A handful of folks here were appalled that I would "accuse" vendors of doing this.

Below is my extreme example from my original post, where I manipulated the color temperature:



This pair below is from the Instagram of a vendor who is constantly recommended on this forum. Do you see the pattern? Do you recognize the background? Do you see even the same tiny defect in the background? Do you want me to "out" this vendor?



Below is another pair from an Instagrammer with 70K followers who sells six-figure gems. Gorgeous photos all day long. Do you see the pattern? You might think at first that it's a pewter scoop on the left and a brass one on the right -- but look closely at the subtle serrations on the right edge of the scoop in each photo. It's the same scoop!



So my ridiculously over-the-top example at the top of this post with my own stones was actually pretty conservative compared to these high-profile vendors. It took me less than five minutes to find these examples and I could do this all night. You can lie with the best equipment in the world or with the cheapest. Some photographers think that the cost of their camera is a mark of excellence or integrity. It's not.

Again and again (and even on this thread!) I see it written that "if the background is white, it must be right." That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Below (taken from up-thread), you can see that any number of manipulations can be done without impacting the white balance. That was most of the purpose of my post. And that false assumption has led folks to torture their images and pretend that they are "real" as long as the background stays white.



I don't care who any of you buy from and, like with wine or music, I'm sure there are folks who will never discern these nuances.

Color is the product in colored gems. I feel that it needs to be represented accurately and it makes me sad and, well, horrified that I seem to be in the minority here. In real estate, the product is zip code and square footage. Some realtors Photoshop in cloudy blue skies and I don't care -- but they are not allowed to tweak the zip code or add an extra level to a home or digitally re-site it in the middle of a 40,000-acre ranch. Manipulating the color of a gem to create an appearance that is better than real life is the same as lying about the zip code or square footage of a house, imo.

There is a reason that models' portfolios include Polaroids. Maybe it's time to do the same for gems.

To be fair to OP, I do find the color differences in the backdrops a bit disturbing. I wouldn't have even guessed that they were the same leather bound surfaces or types of metal. No clue if the stones look more or less accurate...Needless to say, I can't afford their stones anyways so it is a moot point.

But all of this is tricky stuff - plays of light and color. I appreciated that someone took the time to explain to non-photags how it works more technically. But I don't love that this thread turned a bit nastier than I would have hoped. It's a touchy topic though so maybe unavoidable...as a non-gem related example - artists have produced entire bodies of work on the subject! Think of Monet's haystacks! He spent a WHOLE YEAR trying to capture all of the colors and lighting conditions of something as mundane as a pile of rotting hay! The point wasn't about the fricken haystacks...the point is that it is a complex, and fascinating subject - weather, time of day, season, (emotional state LOL) all impact how we perceive color.

I think setting aside how one feels about the intentions of the vendors...it's impossible to say. I'm sure some do it with malice, and some successfully are able to better represent the way a stone looks IRL. I am sure no one on this forum is obtuse or naive enough to think that there aren't scammers out there, same goes for the assumption that there are vendors that painstakingly try to represent their products as accurately as humanly possible without spending weeks on each gem, trying to capture in any number of POSSIBLE lighting conditions.

We as consumers expect or hope to have many days to admire and review a stone's performance in as many lighting conditions as possible - can we really expect a vendor to account for that much complexity in a couple of 2d images? Probably not reasonably. God help the ones that TRY as despite their efforts I am sure they can't please everyone. But I for one appreciate the effort.

Long story short - I think that people do the best they can given the tools they have. I will do my best to avoid vendors that are conspicuously edit photos to misrepresent (like one IG vendor I shared photos of in another thread that upon review really does have the most unrealistically electrifyingly colored images). I will also try to give most vendors the benefit of the doubt and expect that they can't account for all of it and be as diligent as possible without crumbling under the weight of expectations that each photo is a blissfully PERFECT representation of having a stone in the palm of my hands.

 

[PrecisionGem]

So I am actually super curious if there is something that let's you analyze the colour of a picture (or a specific potion of the picture).

Like the digital colour meter here

Winza vs. Burma- Ruby Pricing

Again, tons of orange. Are you asking to see stones with orange modifiers or requesting no pink/purple? It may just be a coincidence or this is all that's available on the market at the mo but just thought I'd ask!

www.pricescope.com

(Only I have nightmares about macs so something android or PC friendly would be so much better )

I actually think itd be cool to apply it to the photos above and see the colours changing on the white background.

There is an app you can get for you phone to analyze the color of a gemstone. It's free from Gemewizard.

With the app, you can use your eyes if you have the stone in your hand, or you can use a photo. Crop your photo in tight, then as you tap areas of the photo, the app shows you the color and the description of the color. Here's an example.

 

[2Neesers]

This was touched on before, but I think it’s good to remember that cameras make their own adjustments as we take pictures. I have noticed this a lot when I’m trying to get a good picture of a gem with my iPhone. A lot of vendor are not photographers and even using phone cameras with olloclips to take their photos. I just took these four pictures below of an orangey spinel as an example. I am standing in the exact same spot and took these photos at different points when rotating my body in a circle. I didn’t edit any of these photos, but the iPhone changed the background color.


The thing that’s interesting to me is that none of these pictures represent the color of the spinel I see in real life, but this picture below showing my skin looking an unnatural color shows my spinel color spot on. It is also an unedited picture. It makes me wonder if vendors may be editing pictures to represent the stone color they are seeing in real life, not the background color. The background color may be incorrect but the stone color could be?

 

[Cerulean]

There is an app you can get for you phone to analyze the color of a gemstone. It's free from Gemewizard.

With the app, you can use your eyes if you have the stone in your hand, or you can use a photo. Crop your photo in tight, then as you tap areas of the photo, the app shows you the color and the description of the color. Here's an example.

This is so cool!!!

 

[yssie]

The thing that’s interesting to me is that none of these pictures represent the color of the spinel I see in real life, but this picture below showing my skin looking an unnatural color shows my spinel color spot on. It is also an unedited picture. It makes me wonder if vendors may be editing pictures to represent the stone color they are seeing in real life, not the background color. The background color may be incorrect but the stone color could be?

100% plausible. In fact, dare I say - expected!
Which goes back to @voce's point about a generous return policy being the best protection that a gemstone buyer can procure.

 

[yssie]

Do some vendors post-process their photos to misrepresent gemstone colour?
Yes.
Is this bad?
Yes.

Do some vendors choose camera white balance settings to deliberately misrepresent gemstone colour?
Yes.
Is this bad?
Yes.

Do some vendors choose camera white balance settings that accurately portray gemstones in a particular lighting environment but that misrepresent the non-gemstone artifacts in the photo?
Yes.
Is this bad?
Depends who you ask. Most of us, I'm confident, would say "no".

Do some vendors post-process their photos to accurately portray gemstones in a particular lighting environment but wind up misrepresenting the non-gemstone artifacts in the photo?
Yes.
Is this bad?
Again, I think most of us would say "no".

Do some vendors let their photography devices choose settings and apply no post-processing to their photos, and end up misrepresenting their gemstones?
Yes.
Is this bad?
I think most of us would say "yes", because these photos don't accurately depict the gemstone in any lighting environment.

Can you judge which is the case from only the photo?
No.
No matter what @LilAlex might think or rant about, the answer is a firm NO.
What you can judge is a vendor's sales history and return policy.


This disparity between intent and execution is what @kenny talks about in this thread and several others.

 

[Rad_Fan]

I played with the app a bit and started to wonder how accurate it is actually. Doesn't it depend on the light environment where the photos were taken? Feeling like back to square one again....

I found that my phone really "likes" blue. Went to see blue sapphires in person and were not impressed with any of them at first. Took plenty of shots and videos in hope of studying them at home. Then BAM, I started to like many of them based on what my phone showed me...

I think that CS buying is changeling but also very rewarding once we found the right ones...

 

[PrecisionGem]

I think to expect the camera in a cell phone to perform as well as a dedicated $2000-$5000 camera body with macro lens that may be $500 to $2000 is unrealistic. I always see people here say "take lots of pictures so we can see how it looks in real life", as if the photo from the vendor is not the stone in real life. Most often the consumer photos are taken with a cell phone, the color balance is off, and the exposure is not correct. Couple that to the fact the cell phones have colors optimized for typical photos of people and even then juiced up a bit to look more attractive. Every years new phones it seems the big competition is with the camera, and more saturated photos tend to make people think the camera is better.

The bottom line is gems are hard to photograph, and often the image needs to be adjusted in an attempt to make the image look like the actual stone.

But then the light source is very important. I you view a gem in your home and you have those curly cue CFL bulbs, then you are not going to see the true colors of the stone. For most stones, the color can shift quite a bit as you move from incandescent to florescent to LED to daylight. I use SOLUX bulbs that have a color temperature of 4700 kelvin, which makes them a slightly warm daylight. These are the same bulbs that most museums use to illuminate fine art. They are a full spectrum bulb.

Here's a color spectrum of some various types of bulbs, notice the lack of colors in some. Stones views or photographed with these bulbs couldn't show the true color of the stone even if you color corrected a white background.

 

[yssie]

One additional point that I forgot to make earlier, but that came up in another thread:

A fair return policy is not synonymous with free returns.
Free returns are great for a buyer, but the vendor ends up swallowing costs of buyers "just changing their mind". This is generous, but not equitable, and therefore unnecessary in my estimation of "good vendor".

A vendor offers free returns?
As a buyer: Great.

A vendor takes additional photos/video per client request but charges a return/restocking fee?
As a buyer: Fair. I have the opportunity to get a better understanding of how the stone behaves before purchase.

A vendor charges for additional photos/video but offers free returns without restocking fees?
As a buyer: Also fair. Again, I have the opportunity to get a better understanding of how the stone behaves without incurring a hefty return penalty.

A vendor charges for additional photos and charges a restocking fee?
As a buyer: Unfair. Either I be satisfied with whatever info the vendor has provided in his listing, which may or may not accurately portray the stone, or I'm out of pocket even if the vendor has misrepresented the stone.

 

[Rfisher]

I always see people here say "take lots of pictures so we can see how it looks in real life", as if the photo from the vendor is not the stone in real life.

I am one of the guilty in typing those words out, however that is not exactly the intended meaning to portray.
Good point.
I will choose words more carefully.

 

[qubitasaurus]

There is an app you can get for you phone to analyze the color of a gemstone. It's free from Gemewizard.

With the app, you can use your eyes if you have the stone in your hand, or you can use a photo. Crop your photo in tight, then as you tap areas of the photo, the app shows you the color and the description of the color. Here's an example.

Thanks, that is super interesting. I had that app installed but some how never realized I could apply it to my own photos .

Without trying to sound high maintenance, I actually a bit of a n00b though and would have liked something in rgb values or even fourier analysis (although I understand this is not how images are coded). As I would be useless at comparing a colour grading of purplish red to pinkish red for instance. actually dont have the experience you have to glance at it and know exactly what that means.


Lil Alex I really have no idea about the bowls, honestly they have groves in each quadrant. So matching marks is not a fullproof way of uniquely identifying the bowl. I dont think I can do any good in this convo, and you are right I regret deeply drawing anyone in. So am happy to leave it.