Render in image or image in render

My company makes outdoor furniture and accessories...i.e seating, swings, lighting posts, mailbox posts, etc. I would like to put a picture in publications of them being in a very pretty natural environment but I dont have the locations that would fit my needs.

The problem I have is that I can render the furniture drawings as realistic as I need but,... would it best to render the drawing then bring the furniture image into Photoshop to finish the image.

Or,

Should I just take my image/background and render it all together in Inventor

Sounds like a 3d Studio type of task or maybe sketchup it acepts 3d objects.

Depends on which program you are more comfortable with and can use to get the best look.

I'm a bit better at Photoshop when it comes to such things, so I usually do better work in Photoshop, but I have done it all in the CAD platform with great results also.

Also, Photoshop will have a lot of tutorials out there, they really have helped me get familiar with the program for doing different things.

Using Photoshop would be the first approach I would pursue. Since you have a renderer image of the object in Inventor with which you are satisfies I would google "Photoshop Camera Match" to find out how to insert the furniture image into a background photo of your choice. Be sure the shadow direction in your Inventor image matches the background image.

The following link provides a tip as to what is involved and although it is placing text into a scene you can see how it is necessary to establish a vanishing point for the background photo.

http://pixelstreetstudios.com/photoshop/photoshop-cs3-topics/perspective-match/

The inventor renderer is pretty good and can do an alright job of this, but it would be much better to render a PNG with alpha channel from Inventor and then just use Photoshop, or a free program like GIMP and just put it to a background. One of the benefits to doing this right in a Render engine(keyshot, bunkspeed etc) is that the environment is HDR and will change with the position of the object. If you have ever looked at a true background environment its not as simple as a flat image. If you have an image to use so you can see the object angle i would try it both ways just to see but ultimately plan for some post render edits.

I did the attached render in Fusion360 using an HDR environment so it looks more realistic.

So to break it down. If there is an HDR environment in Inventor you can use for your products go for it. If not, get the angle as close as you can in Inventor to an image you have to use and then slap it in post process. No matter what you do there will be some gamble/variable to it because of lighting, gamma etc. these can be adjusted a bit in PS if you are good at it.