"Many furniture manufactures are using this medium to put together their catalogues and such," said Richard Benson, creative director at digital imagery studio Pikcells. "The technology can now make these wonderfully realistic images as good as photography, and in some cases better."
Benson said the rapid advances in digital image-making were leading to the mass closure of photography studios that specialised in interior and product shoots for brands. "It's quite a big deal as lots of photography studios have been uprooted," he said. "Over the past five years, there's been a few studios that have really come to the end of their time doing room sets and have seen CGI coming through and packed up shop and called it a day really."
Other photography studios have embraced CGI and turned themselves into digital studios. He added: "We've been brought in to produce what the photographer was doing anyway. The end if the same but the means is different."