Gold and silver are the two most common metals in jewellery — and they require completely different approaches when it comes to lighting, white balance, and post-processing colour grading. Getting this wrong is one of the most common reasons jewellery product photos look "off" even when the shot itself is technically sharp.
Here's what you need to know for each metal, and how Orniva's AI handles the differences automatically.
Why metal type changes everything in colour grading
Metal is highly reflective. It doesn't have a fixed "colour" the way a painted surface does — it reflects and absorbs the colours around it. This means:
- Gold jewellery photographed under cool white light looks greenish or washed out
- Silver jewellery photographed under warm light looks yellowish and loses its crispness
- Rose gold sits between both and needs balanced, neutral lighting to render accurately
The goal of colour grading is to restore what the metal actually looks like to the naked eye — warm and rich for gold, cool and bright for silver.
Gold jewellery
Warm white balance (4800–5500K). Slight yellow/amber boost in HSL. Recover highlights carefully — gold clips fast. Avoid cool overhead lighting which kills the warmth.
Silver jewellery
Cool to neutral white balance (6000–6500K). Slight blue/cyan in highlights. Boost contrast more aggressively — silver lives in the contrast. Avoid warm lighting which yellows the metal.
Shooting tips for gold jewellery
Use warm, diffused lighting
Gold needs warmth to look luxurious. A tungsten light source at 3200K — or a daylight source warmed with a CTO gel — brings out the richness of yellow gold. Avoid pure white LED panels without a warm filter, which make gold look anaemic.
Watch your highlights
Gold is highly reflective and clips to pure white very easily. Keep your exposure conservative and recover detail in highlights during editing. An overexposed gold surface looks silver — the most common and avoidable mistake.
Background colour matters more for gold
Gold picks up background colours strongly. A pure white background is safe. A warm cream or ivory can enhance the warmth. Avoid grey backgrounds — they cool the metal and reduce perceived quality.
Shooting tips for silver jewellery
Use cool, bright lighting
Silver needs cool light to look its best. Daylight-balanced LEDs (5500–6500K) or north-facing window light produce the crisp, bright quality that makes silver look clean and premium. Warm tungsten light yellows silver and makes it look dirty.
Push contrast in editing
Silver's personality is in its contrast — bright specular highlights against deeper mid-tones. Don't flatten the histogram trying to avoid highlights. A bit of clipping in the bright specular is fine and expected for silver.
Grey backgrounds work well for silver
A cool light grey background complements silver without competing with it. Pure white can wash silver out in the highlights. Black backgrounds produce dramatic results but require careful lighting to separate the metal edges.
Rose gold: the balanced approach
Rose gold is a blend of yellow gold and copper. It looks best under neutral to slightly warm lighting — pure cool light kills the pink warmth, pure warm light makes it look orange. Target 5200–5500K and keep colour saturation moderate. In editing, a small boost to red and a slight reduction in yellow gives accurate rose gold tones.
Using Orniva: When you enable colour correction in Orniva, select the metal type — Gold, Silver, or Rose Gold. Orniva applies the appropriate white balance correction and HSL grading automatically. No manual colour work required.
What to do if you have a mixed-metal piece
Two-tone jewellery (gold and silver in the same piece) requires a neutral white balance and minimal colour grading — you can't optimise for both metals simultaneously. Shoot at 5000–5200K and rely on Orniva's AI to identify the dominant metal and grade accordingly. Review the output and adjust if the balance looks off.
Let Orniva handle colour grading automatically — select your metal type and get perfectly graded images.
Try colour correction — $0.10/image →