Ring & Jewellery Identifier App
The whole piece read together — setting, metal and stones — before anyone charges you for an appraisal.
Lovenhall Ring IdentifierRead a whole piece — setting and stones together.
Not a loose gem but the whole piece: the setting and the stones read together, with a range to orient you before anyone charges you for an appraisal.
Rings & fine jewellery
Three moves, and you have a figure
You photograph it. The instrument reads it. You know where you stand.
You photograph it
One photograph. Nothing to fill in, nothing to send away.
It reads what it sees
The reading happens there and then, on the phone.
You have a figure to work from
A range, in seconds — enough to know where you stand.
What a photograph can and cannot settle
Most people do not own a loose gem. They own a ring: a metal, a setting, a main stone and usually some smaller ones, made as one object and valued as one object. The Ring Identifier reads the piece that way rather than pretending the stone is the only thing there.
If what you are holding is a loose diamond, or a solitaire where the stone is plainly the whole story, the Diamond Identifier is the sharper tool. This one is for everything else — the cluster, the eternity band, the inherited dress ring nobody in the family can describe.
| The question | How far a photograph gets | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| What kind of piece is this? | Strong. Setting style, era, stone arrangement and metal colour read well. | Nothing further needed for a description. |
| What metal is it? | A likely answer from colour and wear — but plated brass can photograph as gold. | The hallmark, and an acid or electronic test. |
| What are the stones? | Indicative. Colour and cut suggest; a camera cannot test. | A gemmologist, with a refractometer. |
| What is it worth? | An orientation range for a piece of that description. | An independent appraiser, in hand. |
A description you can act on is worth a great deal when you currently have none. Treat everything below the first row as provisional.
What a setting hides
A setting exists partly to hold a stone and partly to flatter it, and both jobs work against a camera. Prongs sit over the girdle and the upper pavilion, which is where inclusions cluster. A bezel or a closed back hides the pavilion entirely, along with any laboratory inscription on the girdle. Yellow gold throws warm light up through a colourless stone and makes it read a grade or two lower than it is.
None of that is a flaw in the instrument; it is the physics of the object. It is why the range on a set piece is wider than the range on a loose stone, and why the house prints a range rather than a grade.
The hallmark is the most valuable thing to find
On an old piece the metal marks often tell you more, faster, than the stones do: a fineness mark for the metal, sometimes an assay office, a date letter and a maker's mark. Those can date a ring to a decade and a city, and they are struck rather than printed, so they are much harder to fake convincingly than a stamp on leather.
They are also tiny, usually inside the shank, and frequently worn soft by fifty years of wear. Get as close as your camera will focus and still hold sharp, and expect to need a loupe or a jeweller for a mark that has gone faint.
- Inside the shank: fineness (375, 585, 750, 950), assay mark, date letter, maker.
- A worn or absent mark does not mean base metal — old and altered pieces lose them.
- A mark alone is not proof. Marks are struck on fakes too, just less well.
How to photograph a ring
Take it off, clean it, and put it down. Rings photographed on a hand are the commonest reason a reading comes back vague: skin tones shift the metal colour and fingers block half the setting.
- Off the hand, on plain mid-grey or white paper, in indirect daylight.
- Straight down onto the setting, filling the frame.
- A profile shot at eye level, so the gallery and the setting depth show.
- Inside the shank for the hallmark, as close as it will focus sharply.
- No flash. It blows out both the metal and the stones.
Where the instrument ends
It ends before insurance. If a piece matters — because it is going on a policy, into a divorce, or through an estate — you need an independent appraiser who charges by the hour or the item and never a percentage of the value they assign. Remember also that one piece carries three prices at once: what it would cost to replace at retail, what it would fetch privately, and what a dealer will hand you today. They are routinely half a world apart.
The house examines nothing, grades nothing, appraises nothing and issues no certificates. Every figure the instrument gives is indicative.
Frequently asked
Is there an app to identify jewellery?
Yes — the Lovenhall Ring Identifier reads a whole piece from a photograph: the setting, the metal and the stones together, with an indicative value range. For a loose diamond or a plain solitaire, the Diamond Identifier is the better fit.
Can an app value a ring from a photo?
It can give an orientation range for a piece of that description. It cannot test metal or stones, and a setting hides exactly the parts a grader would want to see, so treat the figure as a starting point rather than a valuation.
Should I use the Ring or the Diamond Identifier?
Use Ring when the piece as a whole is the question — clusters, eternity bands, inherited dress rings, anything where the setting and several stones matter. Use Diamond when a single stone is the story, loose or set.
Can an app read a hallmark?
Sometimes, if the mark is crisp and you can get the camera close enough to hold focus. Hallmarks are small and often worn, and a faint one needs a loupe or a jeweller. They are worth chasing: on an old piece the marks frequently date it more precisely than the stones do.
Is the Ring Identifier free?
It is free to try on iPhone and iPad. Every figure is an estimate, never an appraisal, and the house issues no certificates.
The free tools and notes that go with it
A Lovenhall instrument reads a photograph and returns an estimate. Nobody at the Registry examines the piece, and no professional opinion is given. It is not a certificate of authenticity, an appraisal, a gemmological report, or a guarantee of value; any figure is indicative only, and independent verification is always advised before a purchase or sale.
№ V · RingRead the piece itself
A page takes you as far as words can. Photograph the piece with the instrument and start from a figure — an estimate, which is where you begin and never where you finish.