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Question

Best Practices for Retouching Neon Colours in E-commerce Photography (Photoshop RGB Workflow)

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
September 25, 2025
5 replies
459 views

I’m currently working on e-commerce photography for a new product release that features a lot of neon colours. As many of you will know, neon pigments don’t photograph the way they appear in real life — the camera tends to flatten or dull the vibrancy, and the colours lose the “neon pop” that customers see in person. I’m retouching in Photoshop and working in RGB, but I’m struggling to get flat neon areas (like paper and plastics) to look as bright and accurate as possible on screen.

I’d love any advice, workflows, or adjustment techniques you’ve found effective for making neon colours appear closer to reality in an RGB environment, while still keeping the images natural and suitable for e-commerce (not over-edited or gimmicky). Are there preferred adjustment layers, blend modes, or colour management practices you’d recommend? Any insight would be hugely appreciated!

Actions and scripting

J

Joe_Goldberg6988

Participant

For retouching neon colours in e-commerce photos: work non-destructively with adjustment layers, use masks to target only neon areas, adjust in LAB/HSL for better control, boost saturation carefully, and check results in different colour spaces. Add soft light painting or subtle overlays for glow, and watch for banding or unnatural shifts.

E

ExUSA

Genius

"Neon colors." Are you talking about pigments/dyes that have optical brighteners/fluorescing agents, so they transmit light as well as reflecting it? Neon is completely different.

You'll want to work in ProPhotoRGB, 16 bit, with a calibrated wide-gamut display. Convert to sRGB as the last step. As noted, some colors may be out of gamut and not even viewable with a lot of consumer-grade monitors and cheap mobile phones.

Use a camera with a 14 or 16-bit image pipeline, shoot RAW, and use a calibration target and custom profile. Don't skimp on lights as cheap ones often have color temperature variation from shot to shot. Profoto, Speedotron Black Line, Broncolor, Elinchrom, etc. are the best.

J

jefbr

Inspiring

I feel like it would take a lot more time and require a substantial financial investment beforehand compared to a basic studio environment delivering 8 bit sRGB pictures straight from camera.

Are you looking at this from a theoretical point of view, attempting to capture the neonlike qualities in camera?

Are you basing this on experience in e-comm?

Why would you consider your approach a best practice for e-comm compared to the alternatives?

I'm really interested!

E

ExUSA

Genius

The first two words of your title are "best practices" which yes often ends up being pricey. For e-commerce, your customers will be on a huge range of devices from phones and computers with gorgeous wide-gamut screens all the way to crummy laptop TN displays.

The best thing you can do is be accurate on YOUR end. That means a calibrated workflow with a decent monitor.

D Fosse

Community Expert

As this will most likely be presented in sRGB, neon colors will basically be out of gamut. They can't be reproduced in sRGB.

They will likely be reproducible in Adobe RGB and certainly ProPhoto, but you can't post that on the web (and you will need a wide gamut display to see it on screen).

The best you can do is compensate and create an illusion. That's doable, but there's no magic trick.

J

jefbr

Inspiring

What you could also consider...

Use firefly (https://firefly.adobe.com/)

Add an image, type your prompt (something like "make the picture look natural and fix the neon/fluo color")

Here is a before (L) and after (R) made using this kind of prompt.

Not sure if it'll be enough for a massive batch of pictures, but it's good to think about this option with an eye on the future. 🙂

J

jefbr

Inspiring

If you can, do a double exposure.

Make one image using correct light, and one (darker) image that shows the fluo as it needs to be, or as close as you can get it.

In photoshop, blend the two images together by using the difference layer blending mode to create a mask, refining it so it only brings through the fluo part.

If you can't do a double exposure, and you only have a correct exposure image (so the fluo is blown out)...

The true color of the fluo will be visible in the shadow parts of the image. You can color pick it and correct the fluo parts with any color correction technique (HSL adjustment layer, color match with curves, ...)

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

And when extreme Adjustments are necessary working in 16bit can help avoid banding.

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