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My jewelry is shot on dark grey velvet; how do I stop the background dominating the palette?

'Ignore near-black' only skips pixels whose three channels are all 10 or below, so true black goes but dark grey velvet stays. The real fix is to crop the photo tightly around the piece with the cropper first, then extract: the background's share drops and the gold or stone colors move up the list.

Published · 3 min read

Why the black option does not help here

'Black' velvet in photos is rarely black. Light catches its pile and it shows as dark grey, with values like rgb(30, 30, 30). The near-black option has a strict rule: every channel at 10 or below. A pixel at 30 is three times past that line, so it stays in the count. The rule is strict on purpose, so the tool does not throw away genuinely dark colors in your product, such as an onyx stone or black leather.

The problem in numbers

A sample from a photo of a gold necklace on velvet: 600 dark grey velvet pixels at rgb(30, 30, 30), 300 deep shadow pixels at rgb(5, 5, 5) and 100 gold pixels from the necklace at rgb(212, 175, 55). Results with three colors:

  • No exclusions: #1E1E1E at 60%, #050505 at 30% and #D4AF37 at 10%.
  • With 'Ignore near-black': the 300 shadow pixels are dropped, but #1E1E1E still holds 85.7%, and the gold #D4AF37 sits at only 14.3%.

So the option removed the shadows and actually raised the velvet's share instead of lowering it, because shares are computed from what is left.

The fix: crop first

  1. Open the photo in the Image cropper and draw a tight frame around the piece, leaving as little velvet around it as you can.
  2. Download the cropped image.
  3. Open it in the Image palette extractor extractor and turn on 'Ignore near-black' to drop the deep shadows.
  4. Pick a color count one or two above the piece's own colors, since the velvet will usually still claim a slot.

In the same sample after cropping, 150 velvet pixels and 30 shadow pixels were left beside the 100 gold ones. Result with near-black ignored: #1E1E1E at 60% and #D4AF37 at 40%. The gold leapt from 14.3% to 40%; the velvet is still there but no longer swallows the palette.

Tips for your next shoot

  • If the goal is a palette for the product itself, take an extra close-up where the piece fills most of the frame.
  • Shiny pieces carry small white reflections. If white shows up in the palette and you do not want it, turn on 'Ignore near-white' as well.
  • Gold in photos is not one color but a range from yellow to brown. Raise the color count to see that range, or lower it for one color that stands for the gold.

Common questions

Can I raise the near-black threshold to 30?

No, the threshold is fixed at 10 in the tool. Cropping is the way to cut down a dark background.

Does cropping change the piece's colors?

Cropping cuts part of the image away without changing the colors that remain if you save as PNG. JPEG and WebP are recompressed at quality 92, and the resulting differences are tiny on a palette.

Why is the velvet still the largest share after cropping?

Because a slim piece like a necklace cannot fill a crop rectangle however tight you draw it. That is normal; what matters is that the piece's colors now show with a sensible share.