How to Photograph Silver Jewelry Without Reflections or Color Casts

To photograph silver jewelry, polish the piece and handle it with gloves, light it through a large soft diffuser, and surround it with white card so the metal reflects something clean. Set white balance by hand from a gray card, keep every light the same color, and check the finished color against the real piece.

Silver is a bright, neutral mirror. It has no color of its own to hold on to, so it shows its surroundings, and any warm or cool light in the room. That is why silver goes gray, dark, blue or yellow so easily. This guide covers those four problems. For the general setup, see our guide to photographing jewelry at home.

Why silver is harder than gold

Gold has a warm color that survives a lot of lighting mistakes. Silver, like white gold and platinum, is close to neutral, so a small change in the light shows up as a change in the metal. Black reflections look dirty on silver, bright hotspots look like missing metal, and a warm lamp turns it yellow.

Adorama's jewelry guide makes the same point: photographing silver so that it looks like gold, or the reverse, is a common white balance mistake. PictureCorrect's silver tutorial describes the lighting version of it. Its author found that lights placed too close made the silver look almost gold, and fixed it by moving the lights back until the light was evenly spread.

Step 1: Clean it, and decide what "tarnish-free" means

Sterling silver tarnishes because the silver and copper in it react with sulfur compounds in the air, which leaves a dark film. Polish the piece with a silver polishing cloth before you shoot, wipe off the dust, and handle it with cotton gloves or finger cots so you don't leave fingerprints.

What goes wrong has three forms. Polish residue stays in stone settings and chain links, so brush or blow it out. Over-polishing removes the dark recesses in engraved or oxidized work, and those dark lines give the piece its depth. And tarnish comes back, so shoot soon after cleaning and keep the piece in a sealed bag until then.

Decide before you shoot how the piece should look to the buyer. An oxidized finish that was made on purpose should stay oxidized in the photo. A piece that has tarnished by accident should be cleaned, not retouched. Etsy requires listing photos to show the actual item, so the cleaning has to be real.

Step 2: Light it through a large diffuser

A bare bulb gives silver a hard white dot. A large, soft source gives it a smooth gradient that reads as polish. Use a light tent or lightbox, or put a diffuser between the light and the piece. Adorama suggests a diffuser about 45 degrees from the product. Shopify recommends side lighting for metal and two lights on either side to light both sides of the product.

Distance matters as much as the diffuser. Karl Taylor of Visual Education found that moving the light farther from a white acrylic panel gave a more pleasing result than placing it close, and PictureCorrect's author saw the gold cast when the lights were too near. If the silver looks harsh or yellow, move the lights back first.

Step 3: Control what the silver reflects

Silver shows what is next to it, so decide what that is. Stuller compared three setups on a ring. With no fill the metal looked dark, with partial fill a patch of black background showed in the metal, and with full fill from white paper, poster board or a light cone the metal reflected cleanly. Full white fill is the starting point for silver.

• White foam board or paper opposite the light, angled until the metal brightens. Shopify suggests this for shadowed areas.
• A light cone or paper cone around the piece for rings and rounded pieces, so the curve reflects white all the way around.
• One black card at the edge for definition. Flat white all around makes a bangle look like a flat gray ribbon, and a thin dark edge gives it shape.
• A card with a hole for the lens, to hide the camera. Adorama suggests white paper around the lens for this.

Adorama also advises raising the camera slightly and shooting down at the product. Shopify suggests test shots from the side, below and above, moving the camera sideways and up and down to find a position where a hotspot disappears. Move the camera a few centimeters before you move the lights.

Step 4: Get the color right

Use lights of one color temperature and turn off the room lights, as both Adorama and Shopify advise. Set the white balance by hand from a gray card, and shoot RAW so you can correct it later. A mixed-light photo is much harder to fix than a clean one.

Then check the result. Silver should look neutral, not blue and not yellow. Compare the screen with the real piece under daylight. If the silver still has a yellow tinge after a custom white balance, adjust the color balance in editing and check that the lights haven't crept closer.

A note on polarizers: Shopify describes a polarizing filter as effective on shiny surfaces and says it can cost as little as $30. Polarizers are best at cutting glare from glass, stones and other non-metal surfaces, so don't expect one to remove reflections from the silver itself. Cards and a tent do that job.

Step 5: Position the piece so it holds its shape

PictureCorrect's silver tutorial has a method for each type. Earrings hang from a thin guitar string, which moves less than cotton thread. Necklaces lie against an acrylic riser stood on its side, with the chain taped at the back. Bracelets lie flat on the riser, which adds reflections and depth. Pendants are held with putty or wax.

Where it goes wrong: chains that curl and earrings that spin. Let the piece settle and shoot after it stops moving.

Step 6: Camera settings

Mount the camera on a tripod and use the lowest ISO. Shopify suggests staying between f/5.6 and f/11 to keep the whole product in focus. If a chain or a ring is soft at the back, take several frames focused at different depths and blend them. Our focus stacking glossary entry explains how.

Step 7: Edit without dulling the metal

Remove dust and fingerprints, and soften any hotspot that remains. PictureCorrect's author lifted the background to white with a Levels adjustment, then used the burn tool gently to restore color lost in the process, since heavy use dulls silver. Keep highlights below pure white on the metal, because clipped highlights lose the engraving.

If your source photo has a gray background, a color cast or stray dust, the jewelry photo retouching page covers how Hues cleans these up, and the background replacement page covers white or styled backgrounds. Keep the result honest: the silver in the photo should look like the silver in the box.