Product Photography Direction

Translates a product's materials into optical behavior - bright-field or dark-field schemes for glass, anisotropic highlight streaks aligned with brushed-metal grain, raking light at 10-30 degrees for leather and fabric, designed 2-3-shape environments for chrome - so each surface carries the highlight signature the eye expects from that material. Use when someone asks "how do I photograph glass so it doesn't look like a blob", "how do I make brushed aluminum look real in a render", "why does my product look like cheap plastic in photos", "how should I light leather so the texture shows", or when a material reads fake even though the shape is correct. Do NOT use for the overall rig plan - use studio-lighting-design instead; to phrase materials for an image model, use photoreal-prompt-craft.

Specifies camera and framing for product hero and detail shots - the 85-105mm focal band, sensor plane parallel to the product's dominant face, f/8-16 focus-stacked heroes vs f/2-4 single-element details, product filling 25-40 percent of frame, at most one prop - as HERO and DETAIL camera presets usable on a real set, in a 3D scene, or inside a prompt spec. Use when someone asks "what lens and aperture should I use for a product hero shot", "how should I frame our product hero image", "why does our product look distorted or toy-like in photos", "how much of the frame should the product fill". Do NOT use to plan the full campaign shot list - use product-campaign-shot-grammar instead; to phrase the camera spec for an image model, use photoreal-prompt-craft.

Designs the stage behind and around a product - seamless sweeps held at 90-97 percent luminance, one-direction background gradients with the dark zone placed behind the product's bright edge, near-black stages for dark-field work, desk and context scenes capped at one prop, and environment reflections that match the visible set. Use when someone asks "what background should I use for product photos", "what should sit behind the product in our photos", "how bright should a white background be in product photography", "should we shoot the product in a studio or a real environment", or when choosing what surrounds the product in frame. Do NOT use for the light rig itself - use studio-lighting-design instead; for licensed location or texture imagery, use stock-photo-finder.

Builds the complete campaign shot manifest for a product launch behind a hardware gate - physical products get the six-shot spine (three-quarter hero at 15-30 degrees above deck, straight-on elevation, top-down flat lay, three macro details of the genuinely differentiating materials, exploded or floating-component shot, and in-hand scale shot); software products swap the material macros and exploded shot for UI-moment macros and a multi-device family shot - with lens, lighting scheme, and crop plan per shot plus a frozen set block so all frames read as one campaign. Use when someone asks "what shots do I need for a product launch campaign", "build the shot list for our product photography", "how many product photos do we need for the launch", "turn our launch imagery ideas into a single shot manifest", or when planning launch imagery rather than a single frame. Do NOT use for launch timing or channel sequencing - use launch-plan-sequencer instead; for moving-image shot lists, use video-storyboard.

Directs photoreal 3D product renders - 0.5-1.5mm edge fillets on every mesh, 2-5 percent roughness variation via smudge and fingerprint maps, 2-4 percent grain over large gradients, physically correct glass at IOR 1.45-1.52, studio HDRI plus explicit shaped area lights, and reference-backed real internals in exploded views - so a render passes for photography instead of reading CG. Use when someone asks "why does my 3D product render look fake", "make our CGI product shot photoreal", "spec the render setup for a product visualization", "should we photograph this product or render it in 3D". Do NOT use for AI image generation - use photoreal-prompt-craft instead; the rig it executes comes from studio-lighting-design.

Composites pixel-perfect UI onto device photos and renders - screen whites about 1 stop below the key highlights so displays never clip, a diagonal gradient reflection at 3-8 percent opacity with a 45-degree cut edge laid over the UI, device corner-radius masking, slight luminance falloff toward screen edges, and plausible fixture data consistent across every shot of a campaign. Use when someone asks "how do I put a screenshot onto a device photo realistically", "the screen in our product shot looks fake", "composite our app UI onto the phone render", "how bright should the screen be in a device photo". Do NOT use to design the screenshot content or its marketing framing - use marketing-screenshot-craft instead; for the shot around the device, use studio-lighting-design and hero-shot-composition.