airbrushing / retouching cars with photoshop

hello!

i've been looking all over the web for a tutorial on airbrushing or retouching car photos. there are several examples of the type of airbrushing i'm talking about at lexus.com. following are two links to pages where the cars in the header both have the type of "airbrushed" effect i'm talkng about:

http://www.lexus.com/models/is/index.html
http://www.lexus.com/models/sc/index.html

obviously "how far" one goes with the retouch or airbrushing will depend on skill level and time.. but i'm hoping somebody here might give me some general ideas on how to start? i'm pretty familiar with photoshop, so while i'd LOVE to hear speciffics - general ideas on how you would start, or general methodology would be fine too!

i've got a few differnt cars i'd like to airbrush and/or retouch.. you know, give them that nice shine! so hopefully somebody here can give me some pointers so i can spend more time actually "airbrushing" cars, than figuring out HOW to airbrush them!

thanks!

Not really my genre, retouching that is.... but I know the perfect place to get quality advice on retouching.

http://www.retouchpro.com

[QUOTE=Lion of Judah]Not really my genre, retouching that is.... but I know the perfect place to get quality advice on retouching.

http://www.retouchpro.com[/QUOTE]


wow.. that's a pretty cool resource!
thanks.

The 'art' of retouching cars in a pixel editor like Photoshop is often referred to as "photochopping". Try googling for that!

Also, one of our members has some good tutorials on photo editing cars >>> http://astudios.org/2004/index.php?hau=tutorials <<< (oops, Paavo's tutorials seem to be down)

Lion, I followed this link, and have to say that the guy on retouchpro did an amazing job on golgo-13's images. Good job.

There are a GREAT bunch of people over there and it seams if you attach a photo to a post and give a hint about what you want to do with it.... usually several folks pick it up and run with it, posting results and what they did.

I joined that group a while back while trying to restore some old photos I got after my Granddad passed. good group of people indeed.

http://www.digimods.co.uk/Files/tutorials.htm

Well, like anything you do in photoshop, you want to have everything on its own layer,
every shadow and every highlight, and everything in between, this will give you maximum control over the final result,
then you will want to use a low opacity and flow on your brushes, as well as a very soft edge, (dont forget to turn on the airbrush button)

use the pen tool to draw paths over the spots you want to paint, and then make your paint brush follow the path to get nice clean lines,
I have never airbrushed cars, but I use this technique in illustrator to paint cars, and I use it photoshop to do all kinds of stuff
(quick tip) to have a brush follow a path, select your brush, and go into the "paths" pallet, at the bottom of the pallet you will see a solid circle and a hollow circle, hold down the alt/option key and click the hollow circle, that will prompt a dialog box with a few options, and hit okay to see the results


Hope this was helpful!

hi,
not sure if this site will address "air brushing" they have alittle tutorial but don't know if it what your looking for.... however....
the site itself I think is very good... it deal with just retouching/mopdifying cars!!!!! and they have a lot of easy to understand tutorials for that which I think you may like...!!!
http://www.digimods.co.uk/tutorials/tutorials.htm

and retouchpro that was mentioned .. that is very good place to get advice on using various tools and techniques... and procedural guidence

GOLGO-13 said:

hello!

i've been looking all over the web for a tutorial on airbrushing or retouching car photos. there are several examples of the type of airbrushing i'm talking about at lexus.com. following are two links to pages where the cars in the header both have the type of "airbrushed" effect i'm talkng about:

http://www.lexus.com/models/is/index.html
http://www.lexus.com/models/sc/index.html

obviously "how far" one goes with the retouch or airbrushing will depend on skill level and time.. but i'm hoping somebody here might give me some general ideas on how to start? i'm pretty familiar with photoshop, so while i'd LOVE to hear speciffics - general ideas on how you would start, or general methodology would be fine too!

i've got a few differnt cars i'd like to airbrush and/or retouch.. you know, give them that nice shine! so hopefully somebody here can give me some pointers so i can spend more time actually "airbrushing" cars, than figuring out HOW to airbrush them!

thanks!