
Creative Compositions For Commercial and Advertising
We do creative composition photo retouching, which normally involves a mix of merging several photographs together as well as doing realistic digital illustration. The ideas you have have no limit, and we aid in making those ideas come to life by making the final image look as realistic as possible. If you want completely out of this world ideas done in a believable way, we can do that for you. Just let us know the layout you have in mind, and we’ll step in to help bring it from sketch to a digital masterpiece!
We’ll explain some of the key things found in a creative composition, and show by example how the layout can move from a basic idea into a final artwork for commercial use.
Steps of a creative composition:
- The Big Idea
- Photographing and gathering all elements needed for the layout
- Rough composition, stitching the images together
- Refined composition of all the images
- Colour grading, lighting and level adjustments
The Big Idea

We work with many advertising agencies and photographers who have an abundance of ideas, but they always feel limited because of budget, time or resources. We always encourage our clients to go as far as they can with their idea. The story is the most crucial aspect of the whole image, and how the story is drawn out is where we help out. You give us the idea. We’ll draw it.
Here’s an example made for VMG Tours, a luxury tour company. They wanted to have big billboards in the Moscow airport of their services, and show their customers the experience of seeing all the wonderful sights while sitting in the most luxurious car.
They wanted a lady sitting in a luxurious car, with a spacious interior, looking out at the top sites of Jerusalem.

Photo Stitching
- The most correct method of photo stitching is to ensure that the lighting and the camera angle are always consistent, this way we can put as many photos as you want together
- This is when we put multiple photos together
- The photos could be different shots taken at different times, locations, etc then we have to piece it together like a puzzle

Digital Illustration
- We utilize our most realistic illustration skills and apply it on the computer using a digital stylus
- Our artists have fine arts backgrounds, so they can do traditional painting and illustration, which is very important when creating realistic illusions

Realistic Effects
- Our job is to make the effects look as real as possible
- Over editing can look closer to graphic design which is not what we’re after, we want to make your world look like a dream world, while having all the right texture and detail to make it feel as if it was really photographed on the spot

Creative Layouts
- We are the powerhouse of many ad agencies who want to make visually stunning creative layouts for advertising awards
- We are the powerhouse of many ad agencies who want to make visually stunning creative layouts for advertising awards
- The creative layouts are always a collaboration between the advertising agency or photographer, in making realistic effects

Photo Idea Generation
- Our art directors and creative directors will speak to you and help make the concept solidified into a photo. So if you don’t have the exact image execution in mind, that’s ok, we can create fast sketches for you to choose from
- Some of the best ideas come from collaboration, and because we know how to pull off the visual effects well, we can help make the idea a lot more solid

Change of Scale and Dimension
- One of the most common requests in digital manipulation and creative compositions is changing of scale, making small objects look big, and making big objects look small
- Changing of scale makes the idea look funnier, more grandiose and exaggerated but it’s technically tricky
- Small objects, when scaled up, become very blurry, while large objects when scaled down, look too sharp. We know how to work in partnership with creative agencies and photographers to get the right technique nailed so that we can execute the effect correctly
Photographing and Gathering all the Elements
The Paper Boat Creative director Rebecca van Ommen teamed up with photographer Igor Kruter to gather these elements. Simultaneously, on the same day, Igor photographed the lady inside a car, while Rebecca drove around with the VMG team to get some of the most iconic buildings in Jerusalem.
The buildings are very scattered and are in locations several kilometers apart, but for the sake of the idea, we intended to put all these locations in one spot.


Rough Composition
Now with the shoot done, we pieced the items together and checked with the client if he was happy with the arrangement. If the rough composition is not approved, it will be incredibly hard to fix again later on as each element in the composition must be carefully cut out, and placed beside other elements.
It’s like fixing a digital puzzle, but hey, it’s something we’re really comfortable with doing.
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Final Compositions
The client had OK’d the composition so we went ahead doing fine cutouts and clipping paths of each building. Each tree and bush were also cut out separately. More challenging still was stretching the interior of the car so that it would look even more spacious. It’s not as easy as grabbing an area and just stretching it, because there will be a lot of pixel breakage. So the stitching needs to be done very carefully.
The final composition took around 8 hours to complete.
Colour Grading
Once the final advertising composition was done, we did a few test prints to see how it would react against the material the client wanted it printed on. We reduced some of the heavy blacks, added in some more blue to cool down the tones, and allow more focus on the outside of the Scene.


So there you have it, a high end creative composition made by us from start to finish!
If you’d like advice on any of your commercial or advertising layouts, send us a message and we’ll be here to assist right away.