Working in Photoshop has always been something I've enjoyed. During my career I've had a few opportunities to work on photoreal composites, or photocomps. Photo composites are the "blending" or merging of 2 or more images to create a new image.

In the world of advertising images are often repurposed for several different products. Photography shoots can be expensive, and sometimes a physical product may not even be available for the photoshoot.

Often the new product that will be placed in the photo is smaller than the product that is already in the original photo. That's where I come in. My role was to rebuild the "missing" parts of the photo between the old product and new product.

I also often added elements like reflections, shadows and light bounce to the product to help it "sit" in the photo better.

In the example on the right you can see a "split screen" showing an original photo, and one where we placed a product that was smaller than the original (The gray product replaced the gold product). By dragging the slider back and forth you can compare the parts of the photo that I rebuilt. the challenging parts of this composite were the neckline/collar which had to be created from nothing, and the area of the couch cushion near the left top corner of the laptop. The talented Jeremy Shelton did the 3D render of the "new" product.

In this close-up you can see the parts the were created. The gray, smaller product replaced the gold product.