I get asked quite often to do a tutorial or provide some hints/tips with automotive photoshopping. So I took some time today to provide a few details on exactly how I do things. Hope this is helpful to some!

Car: Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce in Bianco Canopus (matte white)

Where: Down town Las Vegas

Gear: Nikon D300S + Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8

How: I usually have pretty good shots straight out of the camera but this was a reject because it required too much work. I then had some free time so I thought I’d show you exactly how I transformed this picture.

1. Cloned out this light stick along with its reflection. Cloning is a word used in photoshopping to describe me grabbing information, in my case parts of the red wall and ‘cloning’ it over the light stick to make the light stick seem to disappear.

2. Cloned out the light pole/speaker along with its reflection

3. Cloned out all the lines on the wall with its reflections

A key rule that most good automotive photographers follow is to make sure they don’t have things ‘growing’ out of the car. They do this because they want to eliminate anything that disrupts the lines and shape of the car. In this case the light stick and lines on the wall, it could also be trees, power lines, etc.

4. I desaturated the body of the car to get rid of the blue tones and to make it look pure white. Desaturating is a term basically meaning your taking out all the color of an element (turning it to black and white)

5. I brought out the reds in the wall. In real life these walls are really bright deep red but because it was getting late in the day it was losing its color

6. A rule of thumb I try to follow is to make sure I can always see tire tread. If you look at a lot of amateur photoshopped pictures they tend to be a little heavy handed on the contrast and most of the time the tire treads are lost which is a sign they went too far.

Lastly I corrected the white balance (overall color of the picture) and I applied a warm photo filter to give the once pure black and white car some subtle color and depth

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask

The high res version/complete write up can be seen here

 

Good one. Thanks for the step-by-step. Photoshop is one thing where there is absolutely no substitute for experience. I have to force myself to use it to get better. This helps.

Good shot with the D300S. Looking at a D5100 upgrade myself.

 

The 5100 is a great little camera and really powerful for its size. I'm anxiously awaiting Nikons response to the 5D MkII they're a couple years behind lol. But that'll be my next camera.

 

Cool insight, my son is an avid photographer, I'll be sure to show him this.

 

perfection? you should have desaturated the rear tyre

 

Very helpful.thx

 

Thx for sharing mate!!!

 

Glad everyone liked this! With all the positive response I've been getting, I'm actually trying to give a quick background on every shot I do to help some of the newer folks. Like today I just posted this Ford GT and list my gear, about the shot, how to do the shot, and some post processing tips (here). Maybe you'll find this helpful. And if you ever have any questions feel free to leave them as a comment on the post or email me directly and I'll do my best to help you out.