Product Illustration compositing the ideal still life

This step-by-step tutorial represents an actual job I did for a speaker manufacturer. This project demonstrates how you can compose elements from separate photos into a still life arrangement. I shot all the speakers separately - this allowed me much more freedom in my lighting setup and afforded the tremendous depth of focus that you see in the composite image. One of my stock images rounds out the environment and it makes a much more compelling image than the typical seamless tabletop image. It is also a very simple project relying on only basic compositing techniques. The 16 page PDF goes through the project in detail and covers:

• Perspective correction with Free Transform

• Layered lighting effects

• Compositing on gradient "surface"

• Reflections and "contact" shadows

Photographing group objects separately allows for a lot of flexibility in lighting and composition plus the obvious benefit of being able to construct a virtual environment for the still life.

This is an intermediate level tutorial – the 16 page PDF steps through the construction of this image but a basic understanding of layers and layer masks is helpful. The sample files for the tutorial are available as a separate download through a link in the PDF - you will need Aladdin's "Stuffit Expander" to decompress the sample files!

3.6meg PDF - Download from Here

Special Downloading Note: You must click this link to get to the "Download" page. This page gives you the link to download the file – you can bookmark the page to return to it later but it is best to click the download link and download the file right away. If you want to bookmark this download page, right-click in the frame to open the page in a new window, then "bookmark" this page. There are instructions on the download page for saving the PDF to your hard drive and a link for Windows users to get "Stuffit Expander" to decompress sample files.