Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:27 pm Posts: 764 Location: Western NY
Wow, that is a nice color. No window (apparently) even though the style suggests native-type cutting. It seems high priced to me, but it is a large stone with great color for any locale. Anyone know how rare Burmese peridot is? Does the origin significantly influence the price on this one.
I think the seller might be trying to ride on the incredible beauty and locale of old mine Burma Peridot, stones that didn't have much of a yellow modifer and sold for a premium because of their beauty. This material is no longer mined, so the stone they have for sale, looks like regular peridot (even though with a really nice color). I have some Pakistani Peridots that looks just like that for 1/10 of the price.
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 12:47 pm Posts: 2505 Location: Eastern Europe
kingfish wrote:
Looks to me like the pictures were Photoshopped to death.
I don't see much trace of tampering... but there must have been some specialized setup and allot of light. The result looks glamorous but not beyond the expected bias of micro-photography. Twisting the photo environment still conveys more information than post-processed images, so... I am less inclined to could that as misrepresentation.
The format turns up often and I could not explain the consistency by post-processing. It could be conceivable, of course, but assuming the hours it would take to turn an ugly duckling into a gem by very detailed manipulation, I really doubt anyone takes the time
It really takes very little time. All you need to do is manipulate the color curve. You can do amazing things very quickly. I've gotten the same sort of effects with stones I've photographed (experimentally that is - I never do it with a stone I'm selling).
I think a lot of the pictures on Ebay and other sites showing gems have been tampered with. It only took me 1 minute to change the peridot above to a pretty ugly stone. The ugly stone could just as quickly be changed back. Labor to edit photos is pretty cheap in the far east.
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2005 12:47 pm Posts: 2505 Location: Eastern Europe
About the photo: yes, manipulating the color curve for the entire image is quick and spectacular, but not particularly hard to spot... Clearly some reversal is possible, but I am a bit confused about where to stop with it - obviously any image of good or bad stones can be altered to make it into something it isn't. Wouldn't suspect commercial images of having been altered to look worse!
With pictures like that one I try to manipulate color so that the background returns to neutral gray: it may not be 100% safe assumption, but often (if not always) the result makes allot more sense for the price than the seller's original
Of course, color curves are not effective if different sections of the image were separated and treated individually leaving no area of the image as a useful benchmark to track changes back. It is more likely to see this on glamorous professional images of colored stones (the magazine cover variety) than Ebay.
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