Studio Ten: Jewellery That Fits

Sunday Afternoon.

I wanted to ask my blog-Claude something. I typed "uncle Claude".
Typo. But he picked it up immediately.
Since then, today I am simply Cousin Peet. "Okay, Cousin Peet, we'll handle it this way." Haha, I was in stitches, and I kept it up. Uncle Claude and Cousin Peet went into jewellery and Studios this Sunday afternoon. NR10!
Uncle Claudecode and Cousin Peet, a family business.

We Are Going to Build Studio Ten

The question was simple, we have already configured so much tech and imagery. Now we are going to add something I have long wanted to create and had thoughts about, but yes, again how big and where etc....but....Sunday, put on the creative cap and sit down, and Uncle Claude and I got started.

Take a product photo of a piece of jewellery. A ring, an earring, a necklace. Combine it with a face. Create an editorial portrait from it. One that looks like it came from a campaign.
I had wanted that studio for a while. Today it succeeded. Number ten in PB Studios.

Earrings as Large as an Eye

The first result was an earring the size of an eye. Then a ring wider than the finger.
"Interesting, Cousin Peet," said Uncle Claudecode.
You could call it that.
The reason turned out to be logical. A product photo of an earring is a macro. The jewellery fills the entire frame. The model sees that and adopts it. Large image, large jewellery.
So we added a note. "The stud is 5-10mm." No effect. The model doesn't know millimetres.
Then: "WARNING: this is a macro photo." Also no effect.
Six rounds with text alone. Zero difference. The image wins over the text.
Uncle Claudecode fell silent. Cousin too.

Three Layers

There wasn't one solution. Three together did the trick.
One: adjust the image before the model sees it.
We placed the jewellery on a much larger white canvas. Now it only fills a small part of the frame. The model sees a small object. This was the crucial step. Without this, the rest does little.
Two: the order.
The face comes first. The jewellery afterwards. In our tests, the first image carries the most weight. The face becomes the main focus, the jewellery the addition. As it should be. Identity first.
Three: compare instead of measure.
No more millimetres. Instead: a stud is smaller than the earlobe. The stone of a ring is narrower than the finger. A necklace is thinner than the thinnest fold in the neck. The model doesn't know sizes. It does know proportions in the image.
Like an uncle saying: "As big as your thumb." Everyone gets it.

Pasted On

Then the size was right. But the jewellery looked like it was Photoshopped on.
One sentence solved that. The jewellery gets the same light as the rest. Contact shadow where metal meets skin. Shine that matches the light source. Lit by the scene, not pasted on.
One sentence. Big difference.

How Good Is It

We spent the entire afternoon comparing with editorial jewellery photography from major luxury retailers. Same type of jewellery, same type of image. But wow.... we sometimes saw 4 to 40k jewellery with images that we NOW already made so much cooler and more beautiful and editorially better....?
It holds up. With necklaces, the length sometimes isn't quite right yet. The rest is credible.
"Nice work, Cousin Peet." Thank you, Uncle Claudecode.

Under the Hood

Seven numbered rules in the prompt. Each rule does one thing: identity, jewellery, scale, composition, light, background, photorealism. Scale is mentioned once. At the top. Not repeated per jewellery type. Repetition dilutes the instruction. We learned that earlier, after four attempts at another studio. A handful of poses per type from which to choose randomly. Otherwise, each image looks like the previous one. Gemini for the images. Sharp for the canvas before and the finishing after. Next.js on Vercel. Storage in Cloudflare R2.

Built in one afternoon. By Uncle Claudecode and Cousin Peet.
— Uncle Claude & Cousin Peet

Peet: Thanks for Claude code that thought along like a buddy today and finally sharpened our claude.md for all 10 studios.