How are those cheesy iPhone press shots illuminated?

[Flix]

More here: http://www.engadget.com/photos/iphone-4-press-shots/

No matter what I do or how I try to position a flat object, its surface will always be illuminated uniformly. How do they obtain those distinct light cutoffs?

[rkulshrestha]

Check out the product visualization webinar - easy!

Shivani

[Flix]

Thank you! I watched the tutorial and it was exactly what I needed.

[justindustrial]

More here: http://www.engadget.com/photos/iphone-4-press-shots/

No matter what I do or how I try to position a flat object, its surface will always be illuminated uniformly. How do they obtain those distinct light cutoffs?

Photoshop.

The technique is quite simple acutally, just mask out the surface that you want a reflection on (the flat surface), create a new layer with a slight gradient from grey to white, and change the blending to overlay or screen or muliply, whichever looks best, then do a selection and delete half of the reflection. Bingo!

[Flix]

Thank you! While the idea of using Photoshop for this seems a little crude, it's definitely faster than creating, importing and positioning the geometry for obtaining the light sources mentioned in the aforementioned webinar!

[j4m35]

I have just used reflection plane (triangle) in order to achieve the effect on the iphone but the reflection is rather solid (no gradient). Then I decided to use photoshop to obtain the image as shown by you.