Product photography is a traditional approach for creating images. It has been one of the favorite options for decades as no other means were able to deliver the level of realism required to make images appear realistic and appealing.
One of the major challenges associated with it is it’s time consuming process. Traditional photography takes at least a week to arrange for the different furniture products, organizing the actual photo shoot of the products and then, further time for getting the images done.
With the advent of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), the entire approach to product photography has been revolutionized. CGI offers to create realistic and high quality at much cheaper cost and lesser time.
IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, has profusely used CGI in their product catalogs to showcase the products. Following the footsteps of Ikea, many other e-commerce companies are considering computer generated images as an alternative to deliver more productive and cost-effective solutions.
Traditional Photography Process
There are various factors where CGI is having an edge over real photo shoots, which are crucial for business success.
1. Time Efficiency:
In traditional photography, at least a week is required to transfer the products to a certain location. Photo shoots are normally easy with a white backdrop, however when you wish to showcase your products in a scenic environment, it becomes difficult as you have to take the products and related props to the location. On the other hand, CGI process barely takes time to generate a high-quality lifestyle image, once the 3D model is made. CGI is a fast and effective way of designing catalogs, which guarantees to provide an edge to your company.
- Budget friendly:
Before CGI became a viable solution to product photography, companies had to arrange for the disposable props and models which required a major investment and those models and props were barely used afterwards. On the other hand, process of creating lifestyle images through CGI does not require any real objects, only 2D images or drawings are enough for 3D artists to create 3D models and related images. A 3D model can be reused multiple times which automatically makes this process a convenient alternative to the traditional ways and help in reducing the cost of CGI. You can easily calculate the cost of CGI generation.
- Quality:
CGI is a flexible process which allows you to customize your images with extraordinary background as well as details. You can customize scenes with any POV, lighting and colour palette which helps in creating larger than life high resolution images that is not possible with the traditional photography. By using modern software tools, an artist can bring its creative side into a frame which helps them in designing a lifestyle image way better than a normal photo.
CGI Process
- Flexibility (customization options) :
With conventional photography, shooting for the same product with various color and material is a frustratingly complex process. To shoot such products, one needs to arrange for the samples of different colors for each model, which is not the case with CGI process. A 3D model is created once and then a 3D artist just have to clone it and add different textures to the model.
- Design Visualization
One of the major challenges with photography for furniture companies is that they can take photos of products only after they are manufactured. Thankfully, CGI process solves this problem entirely, where products can be visualized with the help of CGI technologies, which eliminates the need of creating physical products. In a simple word, CGI helps you see and build the product photo way before actually manufacturing it, giving you an advantage to promote it earlier than usual.
- Helps in marketing:
Since CGI process does not need physical models to create product images, it gives you the opportunity to promote the product before it’s actually built and in the market. 3D models created once can be reused again in different environments and lighting sequences. Digital innovations are bringing interactivity as a powerful marketing tool. Also, with the use of CGI, you can highlight your product’s features in a better way. CGI based photography has their own advantages over conventional means like it is giving furniture marketers a different approach of designing interactive 3D models of products which lets the buyer to have a clear view of the product and visualize how that product will fit in a certain environment.
Technologies having such efficiency level and creativity freedom was not available previously. Today a companies can create high quality image content for their catalog or marketing campaigns without any photography practice thanks to CGI technologies. As designing 3D visuals are way cheaper and faster with CGI , this helps retailers in accelerating and improving the outcome of their overall promotional efforts. In order to get a maximum return on investment of your marketing and showcase your products in the best way possible, CGI is the way.
To know more, how CGI can help you in expanding your outreach, Click here