Neat pic I was working on. . .

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SmoochyTX

SmoochyTX

Lifer
Apr 19, 2003
13,615
0
0
I too like the colors. I also love old trucks. Would love to have a larger size for a wallpaper. :)
 
Mrvile

Mrvile

Lifer
Oct 16, 2004
14,066
1
0
Looks alright, but something about the red on the truck bothers me a little bit...I think I would've liked either a full color or full BW version better.
 
yhelothar

yhelothar

Lifer
Dec 11, 2002
18,409
39
91
anyone have a photoshop primer?
Click to expand...
Here's one I wrote on another forum regarding this pic I did:
Pic of my miata
Original

My workflow isn't too formulaic, but the general concept of it is to get the main subject in focus by minimalizing distractions.
I generally try to achieve this by the manipulation of lighting and color. In the original miata pic, the sky was too bright, and the car was too dark. There were colors everywhere that distracted from the scene and didn't blend well. So basically, for your image, you want to figure out what's distracting the main subject in the picture.

1. To manipulate the lighting of an image, the blending modes in photoshop are REALLY powerful for this. You could very easily darken the lighting just by using the paintbrush tool with the soft light or overlay blending mode, and black as the color. Furthermore, you can add red lighting by using a red paintbrush or blue color with the blue paintbrush.

The gradient tool on the overlay/soft light very useful to seamlessly and quickly change the lighting. For example, the most simple black to white gradient can allow you to darken one side of the image while lightening up the other side. So in the case of my miata pic where the sky was too bright, and the car was too dim, just using this tool would instantly bring the car out of the picture, and subdue the bright sky.

Furthermore, you can change the color intensity just by duplicating the original layer and setting the blending mode to softlight/overlay. This works since you're basically casting a light that's identical to the picture. I also like to use this to increase the contrast. Use curves on the new duplicate layer to fine tune the contrast. Another great thing with this is that you can just the burn tool to darken objects that you find that are too bright, or the dodge tool to brighten up things that are too dark.

2. To selectively manipulate certain colors an image, I find hue/saturation and selective color to be the most useful. In the miata pic, I desaturated the green with the hue/saturation by selecting green from the menu, and using the eyedropper tool to color sample a patch of grass.
I used selective color to color balance a specific color. For example, if I find the shade of blue a bit too green, I can neutralize it by using selective color.

3. Local contrast. Here's a guide that talks about it indetail
Basically you use unsharp mask with a high radius. This really creates a lot of pop in your images. This technique was really powerful in giving the cars a high luster shine.

4. Depth of Focus. This one is really optional, but it's a quick way to subdue the backdrop. It's hard to get it to look genuine though, so I generally don't use it.
To bring things out of focus, Lens Blur is obviously the best choice.
I generally just duplicate the original layer, and lens blur the whole image. Then I use the eraser tool to get the subject back in focus. You want to make brush size of the eraser tool very big with minimal hardness in order to get a smooth transition between blurriness and non blurriness.
Don't worry about erasing too much of the blur. You can then go back and fine tune it with the history brush tool.


So that's basically it. It mostly just boils down to lighting and color. You really just have to play with the tools in photoshop, and to tinker with different settings to taste. But the goal of retouching a picture is quite simply to bring the main subject out as the primary focus of the picture.
 
F

FP

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2005
4,568
0
0
That truck is haunted. I see two skulls in the windows. Eeek!
 
9

91TTZ

Lifer
Jan 31, 2005
14,374
1
0
Originally posted by: astroidea
Here's one I wrote on another forum regarding this pic I did:
Pic of my miata
Original

My workflow isn't too formulaic, but the general concept of it is to get the main subject in focus by minimalizing distractions.
I generally try to achieve this by the manipulation of lighting and color. In the original miata pic, the sky was too bright, and the car was too dark. There were colors everywhere that distracted from the scene and didn't blend well. So basically, for your image, you want to figure out what's distracting the main subject in the picture.
Click to expand...

Most of those problems were caused by the fact that you took the picture at the wrong time of the day. The lighting is behind your subject, so of course the sky was bright and the subject was dark. You usually only do that if you want to shoot silhouettes.

Originally posted by: astroidea
4. Depth of Focus. This one is really optional, but it's a quick way to subdue the backdrop. It's hard to get it to look genuine though, so I generally don't use it.
To bring things out of focus, Lens Blur is obviously the best choice.
I generally just duplicate the original layer, and lens blur the whole image. Then I use the eraser tool to get the subject back in focus. You want to make brush size of the eraser tool very big with minimal hardness in order to get a smooth transition between blurriness and non blurriness.
Don't worry about erasing too much of the blur. You can then go back and fine tune it with the history brush tool.
Click to expand...

This one is also easy to solve with photographic techniques. You used too high of an F-stop, so everything was in focus. Use a wider aperture and the picture will come out with the subject in focus, but everything behind it will be blurry.

The one thing that needed Photoshopping was the paint chipping on the facia. Everything else could have been done on the camera.


 
episodic

episodic

Lifer
Feb 7, 2004
11,088
2
81
Originally posted by: SuperSix
Originally posted by: episodic
http://episodic.smugmug.com/photos/136517965-L.jpg

Playing around. . .
Click to expand...

You should love these..
http://knuttz.net/hosted_pages/HDR-Autos-20070308
Click to expand...

Some of those I do indeed love. The heavily hdr'd images that take on a cartoonish quality I'm not really digging. . .

My stuff isn't hdr'd at all - just jpegs from a simple fuji f20 camera with some photoshop/lightroom editing. I actually did all the edits for this one in lightroom.
 
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