Advertising photography has become inseparable from digital manipulation. 

This statement is by no means meant to diminish the importance of the skills of a professional photographer. I'm simply stating that 99.9 per cent of advertising photography will at some point be manipulated or changed from the original pixels captured by the camera's sensor. 

It's just the nature of the creative business. Every photographer accepts that his or her images will be colour corrected, cropped, composited, CMYK converted, or 'digitally enhanced' in some way. Particularly in the case of more complex visual ideas, photography may only be a small part of a larger digital composition image or computer generated image (CGI). 

As a creative director (and photography enthusiast), I appreciate the subtleties of lighting, composition, exposure, and speed settings—all building blocks of a good photograph. But, sometimes you just can't capture in camera that wacky idea that you have in your head—Wacom pen-wielding digital artist to the rescue! 

You want a saw blade to burst out of the spine of a cancer pain sufferer? No problem. Can you merge human limbs together? Simple enough. Anything you can imagine can be brought to life. 

Armed with the joint skills of a well-chosen and highly gifted photographer and a masterful digital artist, advertising creatives are capable of producing communications that elicit dramatic visceral reactions, tell the brand story in fresh and intriguing ways, and begin to reshape our expectations of what we can do in pharma marketing. 

A word of caution: overuse of these weapons can have the opposite effect as well, producing a confusing, over-busy execution that clouds the communication. 
I have chosen three examples of what I consider to represent the perfect union of mad creative, cool photography, and crazy CGI skills. Enjoy.

Nycomed: Breakthrough Cancer Pain

Author

Public

This is an excellent example of combining photography and digital manipulation to create a visceral retina-jarring piece that communicates pain, plain and simple. This idea could have backfired and just ended up as a horror show, but skillful art direction has kept it tasteful without losing the impact.

Children’s Panadol: Their pain is your pain

Author

Public

This ad works well on a couple of levels: (1) It taps directly into the psyche by exploiting the parental instinct to protect and nurture her offspring. (2) With subtle and clever use of digital manipulation, their pain becomes one shared experience by merging hands and mirroring expressions. Clever, simple, and effective. 

Sargam: For better digestion

Author

Public

I’ve included this ad not because it showcases an incredible feat of digital wizardry, but because it’s a perfect example of less is more. Take one beautiful female model with a digestive problem and add strategically placed bubbles to create a hilarious, but effective message in a classic problem/solution ad. Excuse me.