Car Ad Photoshop Tutorial Miss Van Lenten Tools: Paint brush, Eraser, Quick Selection/Magic Wand, Quick Mask, Layer Mask Part One: Google image search for a car of your choosing. Make sure you go to tools then size to find images that are Larger than 1024x768 (This ensures our image wont be pixelated). *Try to find one without a busy background so its easier to cut out* Make sure once you find your image you click either; the image itself, visit, or the link, this will bring you to the actual size image. Click and drag that to the desktop of your computer. *Do not just click and drag straight from the google preview the image will not be as large as it is supposed to be* Part Two: Open Adobe Photoshop; Go to File, Open, and select your image from your desktop. This will open a document as big as your car photo. (If your car looks too small check that all of part one was done correctly, or ask for help) Once your car document is open, go to window, layers; a box like this (right image) should pop up. You should have one layer with your car photo in it. Double click on where the layer says BackGround. The box below will pop up, change the name of the layer to either car or the model of your car. You aren t changing anything else here. Press OK.
In your layers panel click the new layer button (it looks like a dog eared page) Double click where it says layer one and change it to Paint *You do not paint on your car layer!* Part Three: Select the Paint brush from the tool bar. Or you can press B on your keyboard as a shortcut to select it. Always check the sub menus (pictured below) you want a hard brush, they are represented as a solid dot. Soft brushes have the fuzzy edges. Mode should ALWAYS be on normal and opacity and flow are always on 100%. *You can change the size of your paint brush with the bracket keys[ ]; [ makes its smaller, ] makes it larger.* Go to window, swatches, and all your color options will come up. Keep in mind that your color will come out lighter than it originally appears. *Do not pick black, white, or gray.*
Part Four: Make sure you have your paint layer selected. Size your brush as needed and paint a section of your car. the paint will cover the image completely. In order to see where you are going you need to lower the opacity of your paint layer to 30%-35%. This makes your paint see through and gives the illusion that it is actually on the car. You will continue to paint you car with the opacity at 30%-35%. If you mess up simply click the eraser tool (or press E on your keyboard for the short cut) and use it just like the paint brush. *Zoom in and out (Ctrl or Command - or +)to get all the details.*
Your finished paint job should look professional. Make sure you're not painting over windows, headlights, grills, trim, or badging. Part Five: Go to File, Save As; name it Painted (your car name). Make sure that you are saving it as a Photoshop document (PSD) otherwise you will not be able to edit it again.
Part Six: Google image search a background to place your car in. Make sure you follow the same rules as Part One. Think about the angle of your car and how it is going to fit into a certain space. You want it to look as if it is meant to be there. Go to File, Open and choose your back ground image. You should have two documents open, your painted car and your background image. Go to your painted car file and flatten the image. In the layers panel right above the opacity setting are a set of lines that lead to a drop down menu. Click the lines and select flatten image This will turn your two layers into one an the name will change back to Background. Right click the Background layer and select duplicate layer. A dialog box will pop up and under destination click the name of your background document. No need to change the name you can do that later. You can now close your painted car document, you DO NOT want to save it.
Part Seven: Go back to your background image document, you should now have two layers, your background image and your painted car. Rename each layer appropriately by double clicking on the name. Click on your car layer and select the magic wand tool or the quick selection tool. To change the tool click and hold and the two tools will come up. If you have a solid color background behind your car you will want to choose the magic wand. Magic wand will select the color you click on wherever it is in the image. If you have a busier background the quick selection tool is a better choice you can click and drag or click multiple times to select your background. to select less use the [ and ] like you would to resize a paintbrush. When you make a selection little dotting lines will show up around what you ve selected. If you are having trouble selecting the background you can try to select the car instead. To deselect you can press ctrl/command D and try again. Think about the setting you are going to put your car in and decide if you should cut out the shadow or keep it in. Don't worry about your selection being completely perfect because you are going to edit it in quick mask.
Once your selection is as close as you can get it you will select the quick mask button on the bottom of the tool bar (shortcut Q). Quick mask will make everything that is not selected red. Select the paint brush tool and you will notice that the foreground and background color in the tool bar changes to white and black. to edit you selection you can do two things. If the white is in the top box you will get rid of red, expanding your selection. If you swap it so black is in the front/top you will paint red, getting rid of some of your selection. Example; if part of your car is not red you will make black the top color and paint the rest of the car so now it will be excluded from the selection. *Swap colors by pressing the arrows* *Remember white reveals black conceals*
Once your selection is perfect you are going to exit quick mask, by pressing the quick mask button or the short cut Q. The red will be gone and the dotting lines will come back with your refined selection. To cut out our car we are going to use a layer mask. If your selection is your background you are going to inverse you're selection by pressing ctrl/command, shift, I all at the same time. This will select your car instead of your background. If you selected your car there is no need for an inverse. If you did it correctly the dotting lines with be the same in your car picture but they will also be around the edges of your back ground image as well. On the bottom of the layers panel there is a button that looks just like the quick mask button. This is the layer mask button, pressing this button hides anything that was to a part of the selection. Once pressed your layer will have two boxes in it, one is the car one is the mask hiding the background (right image). You can see by the small outline around the second mask thumbnail that it is selected. if you need to refine your mask this is good.
Now to refine you mask if your cut out wasn't perfect you make sure your mask thumbnail is selected (like above) and then you can just use the eraser to get any spots you missed. Once you are done select the car thumbnail in that layer. Now you can resize and place your car wherever you'd like. Select the move tool (first tool in the tool box or shortcut v) and press ctrl/command T. This will allow you to transform the size of your image. Whenever you change the size make sure you hold down the shift button, this will keep the constraints of your image. Once it is the size you want press enter to set it.
Find a logo of the car brand and go; file, place, and select the logo. Cut the logo out of the background (if it has one) using the layer mask steps in Part Seven. Once it is cut out hit ctrl/command T to move and resize, remember to hold shift! Use the text tool to put in your own slogan for the car/brand. Your goal is to make people want to buy this vehicle! Make sure you save your project as a PSD and a JPEG