{"id":4030,"date":"2020-04-10T01:41:17","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T01:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.happyfinish.com\/?p=4030"},"modified":"2023-05-04T08:40:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T08:40:59","slug":"the-product-swap-technique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyfinish.com\/the-product-swap-technique\/","title":{"rendered":"The Product Swap Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apparel Brands: Are you in a Content Creation Hiatus?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what happens next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All About Product Swapping<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since our early retouch roots, the name Happy Finish has been synonymous with high quality advertising imagery. One of our main staples has been the ability to offer creative solutions when brands have a production issue that couldn\u2019t be solved on set, looking to fix certain criteria not possible in camera through post-production. When in need of production flexibility, many prominent apparel brands have been drawn to our ability to take pre-photographed talent and swap product or \u2018re-dress\u2019 in post, repurposing shot assets to give them a new lease of life. We first developed our techniques in this area when shoots couldn’t take place due to logistical or budget reasons – the redressing of talent offered an alternative solution to problematic productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So How Does It Work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The methodology is a very structured one, derived from the skill sets of retouchers with decades of experience specifically in advertising retouching, be it product retouch or complicated multi-part comps. We usually begin by stripping back the existing details and textures and then building back up the new textures and details. Depending on the particular nature of the image we often shoot supplemental photography to allow us to sample textures or aid in the construction of a particular detail such as a collar. In order to output a cohesive re-dress it obviously helps to have access to as much resource as possible including any clothing samples, line arts, textural swatches or photographic assets from past campaigns \/ e-commerce that can be referenced, however this is not always necessary depending on the tier of work required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Procedure: The Artist\u2019s Explanation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a number of techniques, which we select based on a number of factors.
Factors include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • The quality of the asset, in terms of resolution, detail, and lighting. These factors help to determine to what extent the asset can be manipulated.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • What we\u2019re redressing from and to, ie can we keep some of the existing structure, folds and texture, or is it an entirely different garment?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    We aim to keep the integrity of the original photography as much as possible, keeping the existing fabric folds and lighting if we can, so our first thoughts are not necessarily to do a typical \u2018product swap\u2019 whereby the new product is photographed onto a body double and comped in – we do use this method, however there are other techniques that are more faithful to the original photography and offer other benefits such as not needing the product sample, for example, sometimes we can work from line art, or inaccurate samples that we can sample textures from without needing the garment at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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