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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:04 pm 
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:14 pm 
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Maybe Patrick and vesselovski could explain how they convey color of a gemstone.
My typical customer doesn't have a set of GIA colors, nor are they expert color graders.

I wouldn't feel comfortable that the color shown on some of the websites you have developed are accurrate vesselovski. They look tampered with to me. So maybe the only answer is to see the stone in person... but then that opens up the whole can of worms as to what light source to use. Every jeweler I go into, my stones look different in, much more so than the difference I see on my various monitors when looking at a color swatch from GemWizzard.

Maybe the whole debate is pointless, as different humans see color differently. Your blue/green maybe my green/blue.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:22 pm 
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Precision: True.. and I must admit I had not thought of that argument: how your brains "sees" color. (Great new thread though.. if anybody would be interested... jusst kidding). In any case yes brain-matter is extremely interesting. So.. yeah let's agree to disagree, but I had some fun with this discussion.

By the way, nice cuts ! My compliments (at least you got THAT out of it, I went through about 2 dozen pages of your site ! :-) )


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:53 pm 
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By the way anyone tried Gem Dialog ? I know of a lot of people in both gem labs as well as gemologists who love it. I got pretty impressed when I talked to Howard Rubin about it several times.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:40 pm 
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Precision Gem wrote:
Maybe Patrick and vesselovski could explain how they convey color of a gemstone.
My typical customer doesn't have a set of GIA colors, nor are they expert color graders.


Most of my customers use GIA color grading terminology. We also developed extra 1000 or so grades based
on the GIA/Munsell, but to my knowledge, sellers generally rely on the good photo, because consumers don't
know and don't care about gemstones colour grading, although they do appreciate GIA colour verbalisation.

Precision Gem wrote:
I wouldn't feel comfortable that the color shown on some of the websites you have developed are accurrate vesselovski.
They look tampered with to me.


Same can be said about your photos on the grey background. Bottom line is statistical data: Sales vs returns because
colour on the photo doesn't match colour of the stone. To my knowledge it's about 1 return per 546 sales across my
customers.


Precision Gem wrote:
Maybe the whole debate is pointless, as different humans see color differently. Your blue/green maybe my green/blue.


True. But whole debate, as I understood, was about claim that GemSquare can "provide anybody handling colored gemstones and fancy colored diamonds a common language by which he or she can communicate color information to colleagues, clients and suppliers" and "accurately describe a gemstone's color". It can't, in my opinion.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:51 pm 
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Hi,

I stayed out of this discussion mainly because all has already been said. Except that Andrei already created similar images that have been available online for free for some years (yey.be). The images (both on yey as on gemewiz) have much more educational than commercial value.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:44 pm 
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What to do with images online.

Precision Gem,

since you asked me.. I am going to say what I would do. You may have already done so, and your mileage may vary:

You're not a big ecommerce site. You do not (from what I can see when I very quickly gauge your website) have thousands of visitors/or buyers per month). So, then I would focus on what you can influence yourself, and what is your core product: getting the best possible images of your custom made cuts.

You can start with photoshoping the images until at least on your screen they look like the real stone does. Photoshop in itself is not a bad thing, as long as it is used to make the online representation more realistic.

Check the sense of reality with different screens in your office, friends, kids whatever. Try it out for different settings, different backgrounds, different colors, using a dome, etc. etc.

Then I would involve your most loyal customer base. You could ask them for feedback when you changed any (camera) settings and they happen to see the real stone, how the image resembled the reality. You can even do an extensive test. Take a few different photos with easy, mid-level and difficult colors to photograph. (I know that Azurite for example is hell to photograph) Vary the settings, background etc. And upload them. Then ask your customers to give some feedback. Relative feedback. What looks better on their screen etc. How does one photo perform over the other etc.

Store all data.

In this way you involve your customer base with quality improvement (most customers would not mind that at all) and you get some grip of 1) their monitors/screens/type of equipment they use, and 2) variation of your images over the different types of equipment and 3) which images have which impact and which images fit "reality" best. (Whatever that may mean but frankly you don't care: you compare their screen with the way they would look at the stone when they got it, so it automatically takes care of a whole bunch of unknowns you would otherwise have to account for).

Obviously this is an iterative process. See what comes out. If anything systematic comes out (I would be surprised if it didn't). If you can use that data or if it's absolutely hopeless. (which would surprise me). There's a 80/20 rule in everything.

Typically you do not need a focus group or a large group, a few people with very different equipment (old/new, Mac, PC, laptop etc) would give you a good insight. It's more the fluctuations and differences you are interested in than the actual numbers. What effects do your changes have on their screens and how can you optimize that process. You want to get a feeling for the extremes, and how to filter those out.

For more info about your user base, you can start with looking at you analytics program. Which program do you use ? Get Google Analytics. It's not the greatest but it's free. It will tell you which screen resolutions, which browsers, which systems are being used. That is a start. You can usually deduct some of the type of equipment they use from screen resolutions. (For example typically 5-8 % of your users will still use 800 x 600 resolution. That screen must be at least 5 years old).

Then dig deeper with say 5-10 customers and do something like I described above, and test, test, test. That's how we all have to do it on the web. We are testing ourselves silly. All the time, and that's not even remotely close to what we *should* be doing.

This was by no means a complete description, but more an outline of "thought process".


Last edited by Patrick on Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:51 pm 
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Hi Patrick:

here goes agian *chuckle* you will find that the biggest difference won't be in the monitors but on weather your customer uses firefox or IE etc.

for some reason firefox renders colours much brighter vibrent.

anyway just my 2c

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:01 pm 
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Browsers absolutely have an impact. Agree.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:08 pm 
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All very good advice Patrick, my problem is time. I do everything myself, from buying rough, cutting the stones, photographing and building the website, and I have a full time job as an engineer. Labor in the US is high, so I can't afford to hire people to take photos and retouch them as the Thai dealers can.

Typically, the comments I get back from my customers are that the stone in person is much nicer than what they thought they were getting from the photo. When I read comments on this forum and some of the more consumer based ones such as Pricescope, I read that often the stones don't look the pictures, are much darker, and the color isn't as good, but since returning the stone to Asia is expensive, and the stone was cheap, they just keep it. I think in the past 2 or 3 years I have had maybe 3 stones returned. The last one was by a member here, and she said it was just too big for her. I have never had a stone returned because it didn't look like the picture.

I take the photos with a "Cloud Dome", it's a pretty simple set up, I usually only take 2 or 3 photos of each stone, moving the lights around a bit. I know the pictures aren't great, but I think they are pretty decent. I shoot them straight on since they sit well in my stand that way, and it shows that the stones are not windowed. Most native cut stones are windowed, so they tend not to shoot them straight on, at an angle you can hid the window.

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:33 pm 
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A.V., I kind of thought that leaving the background in the picture helps you get a feel for the tone of the stone. If you photoshop out the background, you loose a reference point. Then a very dark stone can be made to look lighter, or vice versa.

My grey background is actually 2 cyclindrical lucite rods that support the stone. This then sits on a white paper. I color balance the camera off the white paper before each photo session.

Here's and example. The first images is from out of the camera, and how it would look on the website. The gray background is gray.

Image

MJO has this stone and can verify that this is an accurate photo.

This next image is the stone with out a background but I enhanced the color to give it more a red tone. But since there is no reference, you dont see this. It's also a bit darker.

Image

Now this is the same as the picture above without a background, but the background left in... suddenly you see the pictures color balance is off, the background is no longer gray, and that the image is overall darker.

Image

And hey, why not make it a color change stone while we are at it!

Image

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:12 pm 
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Precision:

Shots: show no windowing: that's a nice sales argument ! Are you also stating that on your site ? I am not sure I read that somewhere. You should !

With that low of a return rate, what on earth are you considering GEW for ???

If you would spend any effort on it, then why not see how much you could improve the images, without disappointing customers and perhaps generating more leads. IF you'd want to spend time on it.


Last edited by Patrick on Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 1:03 am 
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Patrick, you're getting off track here, the thread is not about how to increase one's online sales.....it's about a software program that reflects the GIA's Colored Stone Grading nomenclature.

Do you also have a problem, generally, with the GIA's classification system of hue, tone and saturation?
Would there ever be a situation where you thought their color grading terminology would be appropriate?
Would there ever be a situation where you might need to use them?

To answer a previous question of yours, I own Gem Dialog. I prefer GeW.
Why? It's a million times faster.
Since I work as an independent appraiser I describe the hue, tone and saturation of colored stones on a daily basis. Anything that makes for a more efficient use of time is welcome.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:10 am 
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Barbra

First: my comments did not deal with improving sales online. They dealt with the accuracy of the GemEWizard (GEW). My last 2 posts were a mere gesture to Precision Gem nothing more. I could have made those comments in private, but I thought it might be useful for other readers as well. I have some experience in the field and I wanted to share it.

Second: I did not talk about the GIA, I talked about the GEW. And frankly I was really done talking about them a while ago, since I said everything I had to say several times over.

Third: you refer to GEW using GIA scales, as if that is a justification to use GEW. It is not. I can refer to $ US in my prices (and for now it's still an acceptable currency :D ) but I can still make errors in my pricing. Just because I quote my prices in US $ are they suddenly more trustworthy ? I think you made a crucial point in your last paragraph. "It's a million times faster". My postings were not about speed, but about accuracy.

Increased speed, easy of use, an endorsement, referring to established scales, none of that make it a more accurate program to use.

If you choose a new form of standardization, then let there be a proper discussion about its underlying principles. Just saying "well it's needed, and they're trying" is not going to fly. You get an A for "effort" in elementary school only. Then the real world starts.

I am not against change. On the contrary, I think this industry needs a lot of innovation and change. Not just in the sense of technologies, but also business processes, retail experience, education level etc. etc. The special JCK report on "The State of the Industry" in autumn 2006 was spot on.
http://www.jckonline.com/blog/196000019 ... 05415.html. And I agree with one of the writers (I think Tom Peters, former McKinsey) that the jewelry industry is where the book industry was 20 years ago. Others have made similar arguments as well in previous postings. http://www.jckonline.com/article/CA6366726.html

About color grades:

If I ever find the time, It would be fun to explain some of the fundamental issues of color (screen, paper, color centers etc.) I am a physicist, I built a new type of laser for my MSc. thesis and I did 5 years of research in materials science afterwards. But I would need to find the time for it. (posting on this forum, however much fun, is not going to get bread on the table).

Since you asked my opinion about the use of GIA's system: I know there's a lot of criticism on GIA"s system in Europe, not in the least from the gemological organizations. But also from independents. I know the same holds for gemologists and jewelers dealing with high end material in the USA. I am sure you don't. Many others don't. It's a personal preference.

I am not going to enter a gem-color-assessment-war. Interesting thread but I would prefer to let the different gemological organizations and people like Howard Rubin, Cap Beasley and also experts like Richard Wise speak for themselves and defend their own systems.

Many people I know like Gem Dialog. Many more like Cap Beasley's system even more because of its refractive colors. Unfortunately politics did not make it happen. But hey now Cap's AGL and Collector's Universe give GIA a run for its money on the certification front, let's see what happens with his color system. Many dealers I spoke with in Tucson last year were going to use the AGL for certification in any case.

Personally, I appreciate Richard Wise's approach. I think it's a very intelligent and holistic approach.

And this is really it for me. I am done.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:33 am 
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Barbra,

Just to keep the record straight I am not sure that GIA did, in fact, develop this terminology. Hofer uses very similar shorthand in his book Collecting and Classifying Coloured Diamonds published in 1998. When did GIA come out with its version?

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