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JoshStratton
04-29-2005, 05:09 AM
I am PhotoShopping my car and have a few issues. First, the paint is crap in the pic I have. Second, there is rust on the car. Third, it is black. I want to clean it up and change the color, but everything I try turns out like crap...grainy and too many different colors. Any suggestions you can offer? or should I just try and find a better pic to use from another car?

Leaving for Hawaii at 5:00am tomorrow for 2 weeks :seizure: so if I don't see your reply till then, don't think I ignored you.

Thanks!

camarorider
04-29-2005, 05:34 AM
Are you actually using photoshop to manipulate the image?
If so what version are you using?
1. You can clean up alot of the scratches with the clone tool and healing tool.
2. Using the same tools can clean up the rust as well. Sometimes I like to just cut a big peice of "clean paint" and put a non-linked mask over the secion I want to replace. Then I take the unlinked material and move it around until the paint matches the surrounding area decent enough.
Then thru levels and color shifts I make it match.
3. Changing the color for black cars is pretty easy to get a decent look. Again you want to mask off the paint so you dont color shift anything else since it would look weird for the trees to be blue. Then go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation, then click the box on the bottom right that says colorize. Move that to whatever color you want.
Let me know if you want any more help.

JoshStratton
04-29-2005, 05:40 AM
There are a LOT of scratches and bad areas on the car....well, there USED to be. It is pretty cleaned up now, but in the garage in pieces so a new pic is pretty much out of the question. There isnt too much in the way of clean paint on the car so I am not sure if that is an option. Maybe it would be easier to find a pic of another car and just modify that one. If I do decide to do that, what is generally the easiest color to change? I am using PhotoShop 7. Thank you Christopher

DarkBuddha
04-29-2005, 06:10 PM
I took a look and tried a couple things, but quickly realized the pic you provided would simply require too much time to make look good, so I'd just find a nice pic on the internet (using google.com or alltheweb.com image search). You'll be better off, and you can find a car in a more easily modifyable color too.

camarorider
05-02-2005, 09:06 AM
I dont see why the picture above cant be used. If you want to find a better picture off the internet thats fine but it may have other issues. If you are after a particular color try and find someone that might have that car in a certain color. You will have a color closer to what you want so you can adjust it easier.
Black is one of the easiest colors to shift. White is one of the hardest, at least to make it look decent.
I wouldnt worry about the scratches or rust. Focus on the big areas such as color and wheels.

camarorider
05-02-2005, 09:38 AM
I messed around with this for 20 mintues and I got most the scratches out. Just take your time and always save back ups and dont go past your history and you will be fine.

DarkBuddha
05-02-2005, 01:33 PM
I dont see why the picture above cant be used. If you want to find a better picture off the internet thats fine but it may have other issues.
The tough thing about the starting pic above is that there are far too many places that need clean up to make it look "right". And if you simply "paint" over the scratches or "smoothe" it, those sorts of things will become extra obvious when you start to do color shifting. See, in really good images, there is a consistency and evenness to the grain of the paint (based on the pixelization), and when you do touch ups, the touch-ups don't have the same grain. And by the time you fix that, you'll have spent tons less time just finding another image to work with.

camarorider
05-02-2005, 06:31 PM
You are right Buddha. It helps to start with as big an image as possible to keep the compression artifacts as small as possible. But with some time an effort you can make the image look great if all he wants is to see it with another color and some of the problem areas taken out.
My point was you also might spend as much time looking for an image of the right car, at the right angle, with the right options; as working with the original image.
I also find using the original image with a few indications of measure, one can see exaclty what a certain size rim will look like on their car w/tire.

gmachinz
05-02-2005, 08:23 PM
I have a different method to changing colors. And this will mask some imperfections, too. Desaturate the color and pick a light color and keep that as your background. Then, create a new layer and make sure you keep it as a "luminosity" and then create a couple more layers of the same image. Then, you can create your own colors in each layer and by adjusting the opacity, you can make a ton of subtle color changes...you can turn off/on each layer by clicking on the "eye" icon for each layer. When you're done and you want to print it out, go to Edit and select "Flatten Image". I like to do collage work and it is a lot of fun to adjust colors by layers using curves instead of by simply dumping paint in. -Jabin
Btw, cut out your background and work with the car only to keep it simple. You can always add your own background later.

DarkBuddha
05-02-2005, 08:42 PM
Kinda like this?
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/noimg.gif (http://www.imageshack.us)

camarorider
05-04-2005, 05:36 AM
I think that is the basic idea. But I think he is talking about seperating the color channels that someone would change and putting each one in a seperate layer.
So you would have a red car layer, then orange, yellow layer, etc.
Then you would just move the transparency back and forth on each layer to reach the color you want. This way it is very easy to change the color back and forth.

Very user friendly way of doing that, and I hadnt thought of.
Good suggestion gmachinz

DarkBuddha
05-04-2005, 08:51 AM
I think that is the basic idea. But I think he is talking about seperating the color channels that someone would change and putting each one in a seperate layer.
So you would have a red car layer, then orange, yellow layer, etc.
Then you would just move the transparency back and forth on each layer to reach the color you want. This way it is very easy to change the color back and forth.

Very user friendly way of doing that, and I hadnt thought of.
Good suggestion gmachinz
I see what you're saying... Does that mean simply using 3 layers: red, blue, and green? I guess if you wanted to save a particular color combo you'd just make copies of those layers with those transparency values and then merge them? Probably works out about the same as my hue shifting/colorizing method in the end...

camarorider
05-04-2005, 11:44 AM
Yeah red, green, and blue would be enough.

gmachinz
05-04-2005, 03:31 PM
Yes, that's the idea. Also, using curves, you can really get creative with the color shifts in each layer and remember also that you can pick your own Pantone colors as well as RGB from the picker pallette. You can do literally millions of color combinations-now, finding a paint to match your websafe color could be tricky! lol But, yeah, using layers is a very forgiving way of doing it. But, you have to Flatten Image to print it and if you don't have a history to go back before that move, you're done with that version as your final piece unless you do a "revert to saved" which saves your file to the last time you saved it-so save it just before you flatten image in case you want to make changes later on down the road. I plan on purchasing the recent Photoshop Photo Editor program-now you can get downright freaky with that program!!-Jabin

JoshStratton
05-12-2005, 02:47 PM
I played with Photoshop for a while the last few days and came up with this. What do you think? Any suggestions?


http://www.wideopenwest.com/~joshstratton/Pictures/Blue-78-TA.gif

JoshStratton
05-13-2005, 11:56 AM
I just realized that pic is really dark. It isnt that dark when the original is viewed on my machine. Hmmmm. I might have to adjust it a little.

The original was the 6th one down on this page:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=6427&item=4541804075&rd=1