Car photography is a huge business and very technical, where the lighting and surrounding objects play a large part in the shot. In some cases cars and even large trucks are driven into a huge studio where all reflections and lighting can be controlled. As photographers we rarely get that sort of control over our shots, but there is a lot we can do in Photoshop after we have captured the images. There are also a great many car shows around the UK and they offer a lot of photographic subject matter such as the old English classic cars, military vehicles, buses, American cars of the 50 s and many more. The problems we generally face in photographing them is isolating one car, getting rid of people in the shot and dealing with reflections. In sunny conditions we also have dark shadows and bright highlights to contend with. We almost never get the perfect shot or exposure and need those digital techniques to improve our images and that can certainly be the case with vehicle shots. Those techniques can include manipulation from high resolution Jpeg images or through Adobe Camera Raw. We are always dealing with highlights, high contrasts, shadows and reflections; they are just part and parcel of shooting cars. In 5 hours of videos we take you through a number of manipulations where we try to get the best image possible from our original. Sometimes that means just a few changes, other times a complete removal of the background. This sort of task is far easier than you think, so don t abandon the idea before you see just how easy it is and you don t even need to make a selection to do it. A High Resolution Jpeg Manipulation - 45:19 Minutes Here we use a high resolution Jpeg image to start the manipulation. We are aware that many people have not got into shooting Raw yet, so a manipulation from a Jpeg original seems a nice place to start. The enemy of car photography is strong sunlight. It makes the contrast too high, burns out highlights and generally detracts from the overall appearance. Unfortunately, that was the type of lighting we had when we visited a car show, which has left us a little work to do. There isn t an anti sunshine filter installed within Photoshop, but we can balance up the areas of darker tones and lighter tones to greatly improve the image. To do that we create a layer copy and leave a control layer behind to enable us to make further changes from the original if necessary. We also have to remove some distractions from the image and one in particular can be tricky with the clone tool or healing brushes. However, we have the answer to that.
As well as creating a colour version we went on to try a monochrome image and a subtle addition of a soft focus effect too. Unfortunately these small thumbnails do not reflect the lovely quality that this soft focus technique creates. However, the full resolution start file and the finished versions you can see here are included on the DVD. Red Car Spray Job - 46:00 minutes Here we carry out similar manipulations to our Black car, but we also have to digitally re-spray the door to cover up an unsightly yellow poster reflection. The manipulations we do here are carried out through Adobe Camera Raw using smart objects, but the basic technique is little different to the Jpeg manipulations we did with the black car above. We lift shadows and add appeal to the sky while keeping full impact on the red car. As usual we take you through the manipulations from start to finish and make one or two derivatives once we have our colour version complete. Giving the old car a sepia tone is an obvious choice, but it is one we must try as an alternative. While working through the manipulations to covert the image to black and white we also stumbled on a nice effect, which is similar to black and white infrared. In this tutorial, we have used many tips and tricks to create an image with impact and some variations from our colour original.
We had no intention of creating this effect when we started the recording of this tutorial. However, once seen it was difficult to ignore the impact that it gave to the subject. Creating a Cut-out - 50:54 minutes We can understand why some people come over quite feint at the thought of cutting out a complex shape like our car on the left using the tools in Photoshop. Anyone can create a cut-out of course, but getting it accurate enough to stand the scrutiny of a large print is something different. However, this is not a difficult job at all, but it will take you 20-30 minutes for a complex shape like our car. We do not have any problem spending that amount of time as long as we get a great job at the end of the exercise. Here we demonstrate 3 ways to cut out our car from the background. All of the techniques we describe will create an accurate cut-out, but our favourite enables us to do it, with the least fuss and bother, and with the maximum control. We demonstrate the first 2 techniques, but spend the majority of the time on the technique we actually prefer for these types of cutouts. Remember automatic selections are not going to be accurate enough when you have a fussy subject and a fussy background too. We also find that the manual way creates a far better job anyway. We have included the car we have cut out above on the DVD for your use, so you can see the work we did while recording the video. Open up the PSD file into Photoshop and you can evaluate the quality of the cut-out you can achieve using the techniques we describe.
Fixing the Wheels - 22:49 minutes One of the problems of shooting images of cars at car shows is that usually they are standing on grass. We can also find blades of grass appearing over the tyre and sometime the grass can reach quite high into the white wall part of the tyre. In addition the grass masks the bottom curve of the tyre and that gives us difficulty when we are trying to cut out the car from the background. You can see evidence of that with our example left. We can often guess where the curve of the tyre goes even when it is hidden from us, but we also find that when we do that, the curve never looks fully right. Here we demonstrate how we can fix the wheels, no matter what angle they are in the image by creating an elliptical marquee and then transforming that selection. Don t worry, this all sounds far more complicated than it is. This work can be essential for when we wish to place the car into a completely different background. Unless we can fix these problems, we will need to make the base of the new background dark to cover the loss of wheel shape. With the careful digital techniques we demonstrate, we can easily put matters right as you can see from our example to the right. A Showroom Finish - 44:12 minutes Working with layers we can carry out lots of little and subtle changes to achieve the results below. We can create solid colour or complex gradients and in any shade or colour we feel works best. Remember, that it s often the background that can spoil an image, so we need to make sure that the background we create does not do that. Here we have lots of great techniques and tips on fine tuning the image for a great end result.
Reflections - 13:23 minutes By creating a mirror image of our car we can use the tools of Photoshop to give the appearance that our car is standing on a shiny floor in the car showroom. However, our car was shot at an angle and that means we need to not only create a copy of the car, but also distort it into the reflection shape we want. As usual, everything we do is controllable and reversible and that is important with this type of work. A New Natural Background - 29:34 minutes In this section we bring one of our cut-out cars into a natural street scene and in theory what we endeavour to do here shouldn t really work that well. This is due to the fact that the car was shot in sunny conditions and the street in overcast conditions. However, we demonstrate how to convert a layer into a smart object and with a few tips and tricks we can set our car down just where we want it. We have created a number of alternatives here and all of them are included on the DVD. Below we just show 2 of the alternative. Open the images on the DVD into Photoshop to be able to see them at their best. The Black Cadillac - Digital Respray- 23:51 minutes Our thoughts behind this maipulation was to take advantage of the rich blacks in this 1941 Cadillac. So, this is almost two jobs in one where we place our black car on a black background, but then move on to give ot a digital respray;
Here you can see our 1941 Cadillac resprayed in green, digitally of course. Layers and layer masks are the key to this type of manipulation, but we explain all in our video tutorial. Once we have the basic work done, then we can apply colour in a variety of ways. We can add a sunset sky as we have here, flowers or anything with good shape and colour. Close up shape and colour - 17:51 minutes One way to eliminate people and isolate the subject is to move in close on Shape and Colour. However, what we see at the time we press the shutter isn t always what we appear to have captured when we look at our Raw file later. Here we use the power of Adobe Camera Raw and smart objects for total control of what we are producing. The result is an image where the colours are complimentary and the shapes add composition, impact and appeal.
The Red Car Project - 13:57 minutes Here the cut-out of the Red car using our techniques took just 8 minutes, including the windows. This is not a long time to spend on a project that would have the quality to then print at 24 inches long. Sometimes we find that despite doing this cutout work, we cannot find an end result that appeals to us. We run up against a brick wall and no matter what we try nothing seems to give us the appeal we are looking for. The solution is often to save your entire layered stack that makes up the image and come back another day. It almost always shakes loose the log jam and we then find our creativity take a slightly different path and things start falling into place. Extras We have included many of the images we used to create the pictures and videos on this DVD. We have also included our finished images and many derivatives of them too. It s always great fun to complete a piece of work and then look for one or two alternatives, often we stumble onto something better. Not only do we explain the techniques you will need for high quality work in Photoshop, but we also inspire ideas too. The copyright of all the images remains with Beckham Digital and they are supplied to allow you to follow the tutorials with our images if you wish. The start and completed images must not be used whole or in part in other works. If you wish to use our images a request is normally met with a favourable response. Check the content page of our web site for up to date contact details. We have also included two of our latest slide shows in both 1280*1024 5:4 format and 1024*768 4:3 format. Both these slide shows feature on a new PicturesToExe DVD called Special Projects. You will find a direct link to that DVD from the Digital Audio Visual page on the DVD menus. In addition we include a slide show demo and an older slide show featuring the very subject we are covering on this DVD...Cars. On the extra menu page we have also included a screen saver that uses many of the images we created for this DVD. Once again that screen saver is supplied in two popular formats with instructions on how to install it. Enjoy the DVD www.beckhamdigital.co.uk