How to Turn a Basic Product Image Into an Expensive-Looking Advert

What can be achieved in post-production alone is incredibly impressive of late, with simple in-camera work undergoing transformative changes once it's loaded onto a computer. In this video, watch one videographer turn the most basic of product images into an expensive-looking advert.

While post-production is still heavily reliant on proficiency with one or two pieces of key software, the way in which cutting-edge complexity is achieved in people's work has changed over the last few years. In the early digital era, great post-production was largely gated behind the photographer's knowledge of something like Photoshop or Lightroom, but with a particular focus on the former. As the years rolled on, the people who maintained their position at the front of the pack were doing so by learning and combining techniques in the same software. Now, I think that has changed a little.

With so many deep and valuable pieces of software available to us, I'm finding that more often the people who are doing the best editing or achieving the most when things are even, are the ones who can combine more software. That is, by learning techniques in different software and then combining your repertoire of methods in interesting ways, you can achieve what many can. Or rather, they can but won't.

In this video, Daniel Schiffer walks you through how he took a basic product image and turned it into an expensive-looking advert using only software. It is unlikely you will need to replicate Schiffer's work here, but the amount of knowledge on display for you to gather means it's more than worth the 13 minutes.