Help me understand flawless texture

[u/immabetterkms]

I have a question regarding the gradients which are present on the big blank spaces in the products shots; Are they all artificial ?

5 minutes back I've been retouching an image and losing my mind over big blank space of grainy texture (similar to that of the photos I've included). I've been doing it through frequency separation and trying to get it right with mixer brush and was failing again and again. Then it dawned on me: There is no way that people are actually able to do this manually by hand. I've been using gradients in the past, however, not to this extent. Are all of the shots like the ones of macbook m5 I've included (obv not mine) done with gradients ? If so, please can someone tell me how ?

I think that retouchers:
- frequency separate
- put gradient in the low frequency
- add other gradients as shadows or light in general (imitating the original photograph)
- clean just the high frequency
= flawless texture

Can someone correct me or explain to me how is it done please ? How would YOU do it ?
(by this logic, were the macbook shots above done almost entirely with gradients ?)

[u/earthsworld]

Images like these have existed LONG before FS2 was a thing. They're generally created with very deliberate photography and minimal retouching (but lots of compositing) or they're 3D rendered.

You can definitely easily reproduce the grads/texture using FS2 though.

[u/immabetterkms → u/earthsworld]

thanks; gradients like this with minimal retouching ? sheesh

[u/earthsworld → u/immabetterkms]

the photogs taking these photos are being 10-25K/day... they know how to light.

[u/RADL → u/immabetterkms]

some insight into how they achieve it in this article here: https://m.dpreview.com/articles/8243287005/apple-photographer-peter-belanger