Post Production - High End Commercial Retouching & Compositing

In commercial advertising photography, post-production is an essential part of the image making process. When it comes to producing high level commercial imagery, retouching and compositing skills are equally as important as quality capture on set. That’s why Digital Art That Rocks™ founder, Brian Rodgers Jr., specializes in product photography and architectural photography with an emphasis on high end photo retouching and post production.

“As a commercial photographer and digital artist, I've spent years developing both my photography and retouching skills. Along the way I've created my own proprietary processes and retouching techniques for creating highly unique imagery. I truly believe that both photographing and retouching my own work has allowed me to build a solid reputation for offering my clients unique, world class commercial advertising imagery. Having control of the entire production pipeline from photo shoot to final output allows me to offer clients a higher level of communication and artistry.”

-Brian Rodgers Jr. Commercial Photographer/Digital Artist       

Before & After - See The Difference

Use the before/after slider to compare a normal, single-exposure to a fully crafted, composited and retouched image.
Simply move the slider left to right to see how the image evolves! Be sure to read the production notes below the images for further insight.

All photography and retouching ©Brian Rodgers Jr. All Rights Reserved.

Product Photography Retouching & Compositing

Below, you’ll find a series of select commercial product images that I’ve photographed as well as retouched. This series of images below were created from with real photography all captured in camera and composited in Photoshop.

Hurricane Speaker - (Product Retouching). At Digital Art That Rocks™, producing creative product photography is what it’s all about! This image was Inspired by the classic rock song by The Scorpions "Rock You Like A Hurricane.” I wanted to create a hurricane themed bluetooth speaker hero shot in order to play off of it’s IPX7 waterproof rating. This image was photographed completely in my photography studio using real world, practical effects. The liquid splashes were all shot on set using a variety of splash sculpting tools. Creating an image like this requires making a complete mess in the studio. In post-production, I blended multiple frames together in order to create the seamless composite image that I saw in my minds eye. Want a step by step breakdown of this image? Check out this lesson that I filmed with Fstoppers.

Death of the Gaming Console - Playstation Controller On Fire. The red playstation controller is already completely retouched and looks amazing! However, to play off of the concept of home gaming consoles becoming obsolete due to cloud based platforms, I destroyed it; digitally of course. Because I shoot with super high resolution cameras, work with a lot of bit depth and a wide gamut color profile, I’m able to push, pull, bend and twist pixels to my hearts content.

Orthodontic Splash. From concept to execution, this image took hours of strategic planning and plenty of experimentation to create. The results are a true reflection of creativity and craftsmanship.

“The Digicaster” is a custom Squier Bullet Stratocaster that was designed, modified, painted and photographed by commercial photographer and digital artist Brian Rodgers Jr. I wrote an entire article about how I turned a passion project into musical instrument product photography. Because of the many parallels between music and art, I was fortunate enough to be able to tie this project in with my profession as a commercial photographer specializing in product photography. One this guitar was completed, I created a series of product images to showcase it’s beauty. For the hero shot, I decided to set it on fire! This was all done digitally through the magic of post-production in Photoshop using the skills that I'm best known for; quality capture on set, followed by clean, crisp, insanely detailed, high end commercial retouching and compositing. All of the flames you see in the hero shot of this custom guitar were all derived from real photographs of flames that I shot on set. While there was some level of danger involved, it was all created in a controlled environment.

Of Time & Destruction. A true testament to creative watch retouching. This visual concept was derived from a Henry Ford quote: "A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time." It involved meticulous attention to detail both on set and in post production to retouch and composite this highly crafted watch.

Time Traveler. A dramatic hero shot of a watch. This shot may look simple on the surface. However, photographing a product this close up, at this much of an angle requires additional skills on set and in post production. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to get this shot completely in focus from front to back all in one shot. The final image is a combination of nearly 50 images to achieve hyper focus throughout the product.

CGI, 3D Product Photography Retouching & Compositing

Below, you’ll find a series of select commercial product images that I’ve photographed as well as retouched. Additionally, you’ll see some before and after images involving the creative use of CGI or 3D product photography.

Outdoor Footwear photography. The concept behind this footwear hero shot was to convey a shoe that can conquer a mountain and provide limitless possibilities.

This image combines studio photography and practical effects using real world props with CGI. The shoe and foliage were both photographed on a small studio set, while the mountain range was 3D rendered. Footwear and other textile products present their own unique set of retouching challenges. I used a combination advanced masking and frequency separation techniques in order to create a nearly flawless shoe. Then I composited multiple frames of foliage, the CGI mountain range and a morning sky that I photographed on a beautiful Indiana morning to create the final composite image.

Surtic Sound Tremolo Pedal - CGI Product Photography Retouching. The concept behind this CGI hero shot was to visualize the Surtic Sound Tremolo Pedal in a coastal environment in order to create a vibe reminiscent of the 50s & 60s surf guitar era. This product image is 100% CGI with the exception of the clouds that I photographed individually and composited into the scene. The production of this hero shot involved modeling the product to scale, building a scene around it, creating materials that represented the distressed vintage paint and artwork as well as lighting the scene with dappled lighting to create a sense of the suns rays passing through the leaves of nearby palm trees. All of which are balanced with aesthetically pleasing retro color harmonies. But it doesn’t end there. Multiple variations of the scene were rendered out and composited together in Photoshop for ultimate creative control.

Surtic Sound Electrolux Guitar Amplifier - CGI Product Imagery Retouching. In order to create vibes reminiscent of the 50s & 60s surf guitar era, the concept behind this CGI hero shot was to visualize the tweed covered Surtic Sound Tremolo Electrolux Guitar Amplifier in a 3D environment with retro modern interior design. This product image is 100% CGI. The production of this hero shot involved modeling the product to scale, building a 3D scene around it using a variety of virtual props as well as creating retro style materials. All of which are balanced with aesthetically pleasing retro color harmonies and the warmth of California sun soaked lighting to provide that west coast feel. But it doesn’t end there. Multiple variations of the scene were rendered out and composited together in Photoshop for ultimate creative control.

Commercial Beverage Photography Retouching & Compositing

Beer Retouching - Liquor Retouching - Whisky Retouching - Wine Retouching

Below, you’ll find a series of select commercial beverage images that I’ve both photographed and retouched.

Apple Pie Liqueur Hero Bottle.

Apple Pie Liqueur Hero Composite.

Red Wine Splash. 

Architecture photography Retouching & Compositing

Commercial Architecture Exterior Retouching - Architectural Interior Retouching - Cityscape Retouching

Below, you’ll find a series of select commercial architecture images that I’ve photographed as well as retouched.

Colfax Hill Apartments Architectural Twilight Exterior. I photographed this modern urban living complex for an architecture firm prior to it’s completion. In the before image, you’ll notice some plywood over what would be another section of glass. Creating a section of building that didn’t exist prior took a lot of time and expertise in post production. But having these post production skills enabled me to create what the architects had envisioned when they designed it. I lit this scene using a combination of ambient light sources as well as off camera lighting in order to help create dimension and further accentuate the form of the brick facade. I also enhanced the landscaping of the property and replaced the original sky with softer clouds and warmer tones. The final hero shot helps visually portray an inviting downtown environment. The leading lines of the pedestrian walkways helps lead your eyes right through the image.

Architectural Daylight Exterior Retouching - I photographed this daylight exterior on a beautiful day in early spring in Lexington, Kentucky. What do we know about early spring? Foliage is still pretty bare from the winter months. In this image, you’ll notice a number of enhancements that helped create a much more visually engaging architectural exterior. I completely replaced the grass, got rid of the bare trees in the background and replaced them with new ones, removed the distracting power line that was right in the middle of the frame, removed a giant crack in the middle of the road and replaced the sky to add some punch. All of these adjustments make for a much more engaging and dynamic architectural exterior hero shot.

Architecture Exterior for Commercial Business. When photographing architecture, you don't always get the weather want. When a client asks you to photograph an architectural exterior at the beginning of an Indiana November, you're in store for some gloomy cold weather. Despite the circumstances, my job as a commercial photographer is to create an interesting architectural image. Nothing a one point perspective, some creative lighting and a sky replacement can't fix. Oh, and I also created 3D signage with the company logo that emitted light onto the building (all done digitally).

The View Outfield Lofts at Cooley Law School Stadium. I photographed this urban apartment exterior in late morning on a bright and sunny summer day. This is a really unique space in that the apartments overlook the beautiful outfield of Cooley Law School Stadium, home of the Lansing Lugnuts. A large part of the exteriors modern appeal are the bright and bold colors of the facade intertwined with the 4 toned brick work. This exterior presented plenty of challenges that required additional post-production work. First and foremost, the concrete entry way and black top parking lot needed a lot of cleanup and exposure adjustments. Additionally, the sprinkler system had left a giant puddle of water in the middle of the parking lot that was taking my eye away from the structure. Much of the landscaping had just been completed and didn’t have the opportunity to be fully manicured. So there was patchy grass, leaning trees and foliage with uneven color. Last but not least, the reflections on the windows needed to be tamed down a bit. As you’ll see in the before and after of this image, a ton of work needed to be done in order to achieve this super clean architectural daylight exterior.

Luxury Interior Architecture. This luxury bedroom is a great example of artfully blending natural light with off camera flash. The "before" image is just a single exposure using only the natural light from the window. The "after" image shows a more refined, natural airy look and feel because of the strategic placement of my off camera lighting. You can see that the additional lighting opens up this interior space quite nicely.

Tempe Center For The Arts. I photographed this beautiful and well designed architectural staircase at the Tempe Center For The Arts in Tempe Arizona. The red carpet on the long winding stairs and industrial glasswork were being washed away by the ambient light on the opposing side creating a really flat image. By creatively overpowering the ambient light with off camera flash and blending exposures together in post production, I was able to carve out the shape and form of the multi-level staircase and highlight the architectural features of this well designed commercial space in order to create a much more pleasing and dynamic architectural interior image.

Architectural Photography & Retouching - Museum Interior. I photographed this museum interior at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee. This is a single image from a much larger body of work that I created on this shoot. Museum spaces like this present a unique set of creative challenges including but not limited to foot traffic from museum patrons, multi-media displays that project interactive media, highly reflective surfaces such as glass cases, and of course, beautiful wood floors that cast color on everything in it’s path. In addition, these types of spaces have a really wide dynamic range of luminance levels. In other words, the pin lighting is very specular and bright whereas the darkest ares of the ceiling can go almost completely black. In order to balance the exposure out and capture detail in all of these areas, it requires capturing a range of exposures on set and blending them together seamlessly in post production in order to balance out the luminosity levels.

An interior image like this requires shooting multiple frames on set in order to capture the various exposures, polarizations and any additional lighting needed for post production. As you can see in the final retouched image, this shot truly benefited from exposure blending in to see the vast dynamic range of tones, a significant amount of color work to help create visual separation of each design component, compositing of polarized exposures in order minimize unwanted and distracting reflections on shiny surfaces such as glass and finally retouching to remove handprints and blemishes from exhibit walls and glass cases that display and protect historic artifacts. The final shots from this series were a collection of cohesive, vibrant, well balanced architectural photography. No detail went unnoticed.

Architectural Photography & Retouching - Museum Interior Panoramic View. I photographed the panoramic museum interior of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. This is a single image from a much larger collection of work that I created for my client on this photo shoot.

This space is a truly eclectic mix of American history and modern day immersive experience design. As you can see, there’s a lot to take in. This museum space presented a variety of creative challenges including but not limited to the highly reflective surfaces such as glass cases and multi-media displays that project interactive media which are moving continuously.

With its bright and specular pin lighting to its contrasting dark floors and ceilings, this space had a really wide dynamic range of luminance levels that needed to be properly captured on set. As with all of the other museum and exhibit spaces that I’ve photographed over the years, this interior image required shooting multiple frames on set in order to capture the various exposures, polarizations and lighting variations needed for compositing in post production.

The resulting final image is a perfect example of an image that would be impossible to capture with a single exposure. As you can see in the final retouched image, creating an architectural shot like this is not for the faint of heart. It requires keen attention to detail while on set as well as an immense amount of post production knowledge in order to pull it off. The final panoramic image was well over 100 megapixels in resolution and when you see it on a giant screen in it’s native size, it’s almost like you’re there in person. The results speak for themselves.

Architectural Photography & Retouching - Museum Interior Panoramic View. I photographed the museum interior of The Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Though this interior was overall pretty well lit, it still proved to have some creative challenges. I photographed this image as a panoramic view with a 1 point perspective because I felt it would be the perfect hero shot to visually encapsulate this space.

In addition to capturing all of the frames needed to create a super high resolution panoramic view, there was a fair amount of work to do in post. One of the biggest observations you’ll make in this before and after is the removal of distracting color contamination that plagues the original image. This space conveys a bright white and airy feel. Furthermore, there’s a very ornate white painted ceiling with beautiful arches above the windows allowing for natural light to come in.

As beautiful as the wooden floor is, even with proper white balance it throws warm tones all over the exhibit which becomes visually problematic. Additionally the window light brings in a lot of additional color contamination such as the blue from the sky and green grass just outside the building. Being that there’s a ton of black and white imagery in the exhibit design this color contamination is very apparent to the trained eye. In order to create a more impactful and crisp final image, all of that color contamination needed to be removed in post. This takes a considerable amount of time to remove as it involves precise and intricate masking techniques. But the final result is truly a breath of fresh air.

Architectural Photography & Retouching - Exhibit Interior View. I photographed this exhibit interior of Evan Williams Bourbon Experience in Louisville, Kentucky. This is an image that required a fair amount of time, thought and patience to create. Long exposures were a necessity in order properly capture the details of this intentionally dim exhibit. The final image is a composite image that blended manual light painted exposures as well as an exposure that captured moving video being projected onto the brick wall.

Revolution in Automation: An Industrial Architecture Interior. The concept of this photoshoot was to show that the client's facility runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week to meet the demands of their customers, despite only having employees overseeing operations during the course of a normal workday. In order to creatively visualize that concept, I decided to completely cut off all of the ambient fluorescent lighting that you're used to seeing a facility like this and instead painted this space in creative lighting. The end result was truly incredible. 

Here's a video that visualizes my creative process for this photoshoot

Fort Wayne Cityscape Architecture. Using only a combination of natural light and time, I creatively blended multiple exposures together to create this highly dynamic city scape in the beautiful city of Fort Wayne Indiana. This image would have been impossible to create in one shot. 

Vintage Sinclair Station. This privately owned space turned vintage Sinclair gas station has aesthetic of a simpler time. I wanted to compliment that by combining soft natural light in combination with ambient interior lighting and off camera flash. Furthermore, I simplified the surrounding environment by removing a nearby lake house and distracting tree. 

Historic Mishawaka Indiana Architecture. 

Automotive Photography Retouching

Below, you’ll find a series of select commercial automotive images that I’ve photographed as well as retouched.

Commercial Automotive Photography - Mazda Panoramic Composite Image. Here’s a behind the scenes look at an automotive composite image that I created. I first photographed the vehicle outdoors using a strategically placed composition where the ambient light really enhanced the body lines of the car. I shot a variety of exposures that I could later use for retouching and compositing the car itself. After some location scouting, I then photographed a panoramic background plate in a completely different location. This image was meant to be visually alluring and all about creating a mood and vibe. To complement the soul red, I created predominantly monochromatic red color harmony, replaced the sky with more interesting clouds, added some out of focus foliage in the foreground to create more depth and enhanced the lighting to finish the look I was going for.

Commercial Automotive Hero Composite. I won an addy award from the American Advertising Federation for this particular composite image. This type of image requires a lot of work both in planning and production. I started by photographing a mobile kitchen unit on location in a controlled environment, using studio strobes and lighting every facet of the vehicle. Once I had all the frames needed, I then composited them into a single cohesive retouched vehicle on a white background as a standalone product image. Once I had a retouched vehicle as my base image, I then photographed the chef and other elements to create a hero composite which served as the face of an entire campaign for this product line.

Commercial Automotive Retouching (Electric Food Transport Vehicle - Side View on White Seamless). This is a standard side view of an electric food transport vehicle made for Google’s corporate headquarters. A standard side view sounds pretty straight forward, right? Sure, especially if I’m photographing it in a giant studio with a white cove wall. But what if I’m being asked to photograph a vehicle like this on location in a dirty warehouse? Can I still create that polished studio look even if it’s shot on location in a warehouse? The short answer, yes if you know what you’re doing! It’s all about creative problem solving.

As a commercial photographer, when I’m working on location, I don’t always get work in the most ideal environment. Sometimes there are logistics at play that are beyond my control and I have to work with what I’ve got. But as a professional, I still have to make it work. In this scenario, I started by photographing this electric vehicle on location in a client’s warehouse. The ambient lighting of the warehouse is not conducive for creating the quality lighting you’d expect for a commercial automotive photo shoot. Therefore, I had to bring studio strobes on location and overpower the ambient light in order to replicate the quality of light that I’d normally get in a large studio environment. Capturing a range of exposures using polarized light as well as creating variables like doors open and closed, allowed me to capture all the frames I needed in order to create a seamless composite image.

Through my proprietary post production process, I was able to seamlessly composite together the frames that I needed in order to produce a cohesive retouched vehicle on a white background. The result is an image that you would have otherwise thought was photographed in a studio environment. Additionally, once I had a retouched vehicle to use as my base image, I was then able to create variations with open and closed doors, ultimately showcasing the range of custom functionality that this vehicle is known for. So, can it be done? Absolutely. Is it time consuming? Absolutely.