Step by step guide for Composite Product Photography

 

Usually, I prefer to get stuff in camera (even if it means light painting my subject). But sometimes Lighting or space limitations will make getting the picture in-camera hard or simply not worth the effort. When such situation strikes go for a composite. If you only have little gear, this technique will also help you get a more professional look in your images.

To demonstrate this point, I used my girlfriends Macbook air and my Fuji Xe-2.

Shooting

The actual shooting depends on how many lights you got and how many layers in Photoshop you are willing to use for the final image; it can take a minimum of 3 images up to 20 or more depending on how you light the product. I prefer moving my lights in different angles just to see the outcome and choose the best option after.

The general idea is to place the camera on a tripod and make sure your product is in a static position – if either the camera of the subject move, this will not work. You can use different techniques for lighting your product but for this shoot, I just used one speedlight with a small softbox combined with an acrylic sheet for the gradient reflections.

Post Production

Step 1: Select the photos that you want. Each photo should have at least one highlight that you are happy with.

Step 2: Open photoshop > Click File > Script > Load Files into Stack and select the photos that you chose

Step 3: Make a background layer. I chose a black solid layer for this project

Step 4: Hide all the layers of photos in photoshop

(There are different kinds of techniques to doing this but I do mine this way)

Step 5: Select the first layer and add a Layer Mask.

Select your brush and set the color to black. Brush on the parts that you want in your photo.

After that, select the layer mask and press CMD+ i to invert the mask.

To check the photo I invert the mask to see the difference I made

Step 6: Repeat step 5 on the other layers until you get the final image

Step 7: I added a gradient on the background black layer for the final image

Final Result:

Wanna try this? show us your results in the comments

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