Besides the disappointment of buying a stone that turns out to be
something other than what it was advertised to be, there is another
problem that I’ve personally had with Fire Mountain’s catalog, as
well as with a number of eBay gemstone merchants*. And that is the
practice of what I call the “misuse” of Photoshop. I planned an
entire piece around some unusual beads I saw in Fire Mountain’s
catalog, but when they arrived they were pale and washed-out looking
compared to the photo. Since I work with Photoshop every day in my
“regular” job, I looked at the catalog again and realized that they
had bumped up the color-saturation of the photo. The giveaway was
that there was now color in the spaces between the bead strands,
whereas the spaces in all their other photos were white. I brought
this to their attention but they ignored my comment. (I’m proceeding
with the project anyway and hope it still looks good.) If you ever
see a photo of a stone and the shadow (not a reflection) cast by the
stone is almost as colorful as the stone itself, beware!
Alan Goldin The Shape of Things Jewelry
*Not to mention the ones who feature a photo of a generic stone
which is not the stone they are actually auctioning because “I don’t
have time to photograph every single stone!”. ThaiGem.com photographs
every individual stone they sell and they’ve all arrived with no surprises.