R E T O U C H I N G
AI Image Integration
In today's technological landscape, the integration of generated assets is inescapable. It's also fun to keep up with current trends and gain assistance in areas where you had to do things the old-fashioned way. AI is not perfect, however. Not by a long shot. So there's a huge benefit in knowing how to do things "the old way" for when AI inevitably fails or falls short of the desired effect. I keep up with the cutting edge of AI use in image work, as well as can spot the obvious elements that call attention to its flaws. With these two skill sets constantly being utilized and honed, the integration of AI has been more of a benefit than a burden in my career.
From Fallow to Flowers
AI integration in this product photo was helpful to give life to a pretty lifeless image, but it was not without its issues that required addressing. The flowers were too saturated, and the AI generated parts of the image had a lower resolution than the rest of the image. Adjusting saturation to match, and using a third-party up-resolution program allowed me to save an otherwise unusable AI image.
When being On-Location isn't possible
I'm always amazed when I or my Art Director puts a product image into an AI Generator like Nanobanana or Midjourney and the AI actually does a decent job at nailing our vision and aesthetic. One thing it continuously fails at, however, is image resolution. This image required multiple rounds of third-party image resolution improvement, plus general maintenance, to make this image usable.
Shifting Seasons
The strange thing about retail is that you're never photographing product to sell during the season you're selling it in. Bathing suit shoots are happening in December, winter holidays start being shot in May and continue sometimes into October.. so there's a fair bit of season shifting that has to happen in order to create the illusion of the snowiest winter scene popping up on November first. Again, this used to be a bit more of a pain-staking process before AI was around. It's a little easier now, but still requires some retouching maintenance. For this image, considerable amounts of masking had to happen on the house, the lights, and the orbs in the lawn. The resolution on the background AI was low, and several prompts and AI integration masks were carefully blended together to bring this stunning wintery scene to life.