taking diamond pics with dig. cam.

[cqdiep]

Hey people, does anyone have tips on taking pics of diamonds with a digital camera? I tried to take pics of my stone, but the cam. seems to always lose focus, and the stone looks blurry. I tried zooming in and out, then moving really close to the stone, but I always get negative results. Do you use a special setting with lighting?

 

[FD21Bride]

Yea....let me know on that too!

Also...how the heck to you make your pictures small enough to post yet keep the resolution clear? Mine always gets fuzzy and grainy! Do you have to have Photoshop to do this or is there another way?

 

[Kaleigh]

If you can take a pic with sunlight that always helps. Take the pic using the macro mode and turn off the flash.

 

[widget]

Do you have macro settings on your cameras?

On my camera, when it''s set to macro for closeups, a little "flower" icon is visible in the viewer. When I aim to take a closeup, I hold the button down half-way until the picture focuses, then all the way down to take the picture.

I''ve heard that you can take pics from a greater distance without macro, then zoom in and crop in your photo editing program.

Does this help??

widget

 

[FD21Bride]

Widget...that what I''ve been doing. I just can''t seem to get the picture small enough that PS will let me post it without it wigging out on me and getting all fuzzy and stuff.

Do you know how to resize photos in Photoshop? I just got the program yesterday and its got me stumped!

 

[widget]

I don't have photoshop, but on my program I find "edit" on the top . I hit it, and different editing options drop down. then I hit "image size".

A box opens, and the dimensions of the pic are shown in pixels, whatever those are...

Change either the heigth or the width to, say 300, and the other side changes automatically. Save the new dimensions.

That should do it. I'm not sure what the pixel limit is for posting pictures, but I think between 250 and 500 are good sizes.

Hope this helps!
widget

 

[Maya Moonstone]

Hi

Microsoft has a free download that can resize your photos with a few cliks of your mouse. The best part is that it resize the photo and make a copy - so you still have your original photo!

I use it all the time for e-mailing photos and posting photos. (do not have my ring yet, so have not posted anything on this site yet

)

The link is:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe


Have fun!

Maya

 

[Maya Moonstone]

Me again - for those of you who are afraid to download an exe file -

Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

And click on Image Resizer in the blue column on the right hand side of the screen.

Maya

 

[cqdiep]

I did not try the macro option, and I don''t know if my cam. has it or not (probably does). My stone is sent off to Scott Kay for mounting, but when it comes back I''ll try it. Thanks a lot, people.

 

[cqdiep]

I tried the macro option, and that solved the problem. Thanks a lot, peoplez.

 

[dazedland]

With Photoshop right click on the top portion of the file where the image name is and the image size will be an option, it also might help to lower the resolution which is also in the image size options, it makes a big difference in file size.

 

[PhillipSchmidt]

When I Email my customers photos of their jewellery I click just one button and the job is done My photos are in a folder. On the left I have options. I highlight the photo and click to ''Email this file''. A box appears giving me the choice to make the photos smaller. They have had no trouble in posting them. 1mg photos become 30-40ks and the quality is still very good.

If you want the file to be smaller still but the same dimension, you might have to learn to optimise them. It can be quite complicated when you go down this route and I find that the improvements are not very big. Strangly the Email trick does almost as good a job as even the best web optimising software out there.

BTW optimising takes away bits of the photo that most monitors won''t be able to read anyway.

As far as macro goes. Try everything and take a lot of photos because different settings suit different cammeras and lighting. I find that the more light I have the closer I can get and still focus. Bigger diamonds make for better photos, suprise surprise.

Phillip