Interior Design: CGI Visuals or traditional Photographs?

With our team of talented designers, we create lifelike, photo-real imagery of just about anything, regardless if it has been created yet or not. Increasingly, interior designers and marketing agencies are coming to us to produce bespoke 3D visualisations featuring products, furniture, finishes and lighting.

Here we compare 3 key factors to help you decide whether CGI or traditional photography is the best option for your interior visuals:

#1: Time and Cost

This is an easy one – CGI is by far the most cost-effective way to produce visuals. Creating a computer generated model of a scene or product gives you a complete record of it – this could be delivered in all kinds of angles, colours and textures, and without any design or size restrictions. While you should not fully dismiss traditional photography, but you need to factor in how long it takes to transport furnishings to the shoot location and then how long it takes to get the photographs back…and heaven forbid should you need to make changes and reshoot.

Creating something using CGI means you will always have access to the digital file. This means you are able to access it whenever you like, allowing you to change any style elements, products or moods without having to re-shoot.

#2: Quality

The quality of the image is crucial to the impact it produces. On the one hand, furniture product photography is a proven solution to get good images. However, not all photos are so good as to sell your design talent. It all comes down to the professional skills of your photographer. Getting a good shot is an art that needs extensive practise, most notably at creating a perfect lighting. In addition, today’s photographers need to be proficient with after effects software like Photoshop. If not, one click can ruin the image making it artificial and unappealing.

It’s true that as well as for photos, the quality of 3D Product Visualisations can vary. The cheapest kind – and the easiest one to get – looks flat and basic. So that’s why its important you choose a company with expertise in this area. Done right, Photo-real images can look more lifelike and engaging than an actual photograph! If you are familiar with the IKEA catalogue you might know that the vast majority of the images they use are CGI and they are practically indistinguishable from photos.

#3: Flexibility

With interior design photography, one can get a large quantity of views. Which are to be specified beforehand, so that the Photographer take the necessary amount of pictures. Certainly, not all of the shots taken will be successful and in some cases, some of the shots might be missing. Once the photoshoot is over, the studio cannot produce any more views without having to schedule a reshoot.

With computer generated images, you can get all the views you ask for and the ability to easily access unspecified views too!

Before CGI, the only option was building physical room-sets and shooting them using traditional photography. As technology has improved you now have access to more immediate results through high quality, convincing CGI. Delivered faster, at a lower cost and with more flexibility for changes.

Now, it’s up to you to draw a conclusion. Contact us to trial our service.