How to Photoshop several fabrics and finishes onto several images

Question

I am creating a website for a furniture manufacturer. On the product detail page they want the image to change based on the fabric and finish choice the customer makes.

They have multiple products all available in about 24 finishes and 20 fabric choices. They have photos of each product but only in one finish or one combination of finish and fabric. As an example the have 12 different styles of upholstered beds available in the 24 finishes and 20 fabrics. This is a lot to photoshop not to mention all the other products they have.

For a few of their upholstered beds I have photoshopped the fabric and finish. This has taken me anywhere from 4 to 16 hours to accomplish. Some of the fabrics have a texture or pattern to them and some of the finishes also have a distressed texture to them. They do have photos of samples of all the fabrics and finishes. They also have zoomed in detail shots and they want those photoshopped as well. Here is an example of a headboard.

My first thought was I will need to hire some freelance designers to help me photo shop the images but I was wondering is there a better way of doing this? They have given me 3 months to finish the website.

Answer 1

Making a fabric look in Photoshop like it is properly stretched over a curved form is very complex warping job. Smart filters allow making a mockup which presents a single view of a single geometry, but you can get all texture variations by changing only the texture images.

Some arithmetic about it:

10 products, 20 fabric choices, 24 finishes and 4 views = 19200 finished images. Forget that idea. The website should be able to make the combinations on demand. I mean make a warped version of a texture by using a prepared warping mesh for certain geometry and view and put together the needed layers.

Plausible warping a texture photo over a curved furniture photo can be much more tricky job than mapping the same texture onto a 3D model. Photorealistic rendering can create all needed views from a 3D model, but in 2D every view must be warped separately.

Unfortunately I'm not a programmer so I cannot say which website programming tools are needed. The tools surely exist because some webshops allow customized surface selection for their products and generate a model of the result of the choices. I have seen even rotatable 3D models which are built along the material choices straight in the fly.

Find that technology at first and decide soon can you do that job. At least you must get some help to prepare the materials and possible 3D models. 3 months is very short time if something totally new should be learned, so I'm afraid you should make something radically simpler like already suggested in comments or let a bureau which has the needed technology to do the job.