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
