With digitization of images, it is easier now to alter the image to help spare the expense of new photography and scanning or to add visual effects that you just couldn't do in the photography studio.

Product not ready for your photography shoot? Wrong color? Need to add screenprinting? Change of personnel in the company group shot? Bad hair day? Bad skin day? Not everyone has their eyes open in the same photo?

Or maybe the "message" of the photo just isn't getting across clearly enough.

See the following examples of how digital imaging and effects have helped:

When the actual product is not available for photography... This company needed a marketing piece to show a potential client a large 22" diameter drum in a variety of colors not normally stocked. The answer was to take pre-existing images of a 22" red drum shown from both the front and back and to replicate and digitally manipulate it to show the assortment of colors it could be made in. I started with this image of the back... added a post, then silo'd the drum and added drop shadow. I repeated the last 2 steps on the frontal view and changed the color to yellow... and green... and black. Then composed these separate images into the above layout.

When the message of the shot is not clear... Just pass your cursor over the buttons above to see the corresponding image. This involved a shot of a complex automated wire making machine which my client wanted to feature in a brochure. The idea behind the shot was "complete automation" where all parts are exactly duplicated so there was no variant in the part specifications. This image is actually the result of composing sections from a series of photos taken of the machine as it was in production. I started with this and similar images with the mechanical arms and parts in various positions. It seemed evident right at the start that there was too much going on to really focus on any one thing. I had to figure a way to simplify the showing of the process. The steps I took involved first determining what the focus would be. I decided to crop in closer to the action, then chose shots to show the wire, which was bright orange, as it travelled through the machine where it was measured, received the end treatment (in this case, stripped), cut and deposited with the finished pieces. To further highlight the main parts of the process being shown, I toned down the color to almost shades of grey on those parts of the machine which I determined weren't important to telling the story, thereby causing the other parts of the machine, which were more directly involved in the actual wire-making process, to stand out.

When you need to add or remove details on products... Just pass your cursor over the buttons above to see the corresponding image. For this item, I had to add a logo onto a tote bag...or did I have to remove it?