Photoshop Tutorial - Fantasy paintjobs for your VX

One of the things i get asked most often is how i do phunky paintjobs on vehicles, and get the lighting to look right.

well...here you go.

Select the image of the TYPE of car you want...not necessarily your OWN car, as some colors don't work well for this treatment. You NEED a dark car, black is best, followed by navy blue...remember, dark, shiny cars...


Now that you have your picture, begin masking off the painted areas of the car, being careful to get VERY close to the paint edge. in areas where you may get a reflection of color, it is best to include that in your masking...this will come into play later when you are filling with color...the reflections need to show the finished color.

Once you have the entire painted surface of the car masked off and selected, create a new layer, fill this layer with black and set options to Overlay or Screen mode (there are other modes too...experiment), name this layer PAINT. Leaving this area selected, duplicate this layer by dragging it to the new layer icon in the layers palette. Make this copy invisible and name it SELECTION(this keeps you from having to mask anything off again in case you get screwed up...all you have to do is hit this black area with the magic wand, and you have all the paint selected again :) )

Now...with the area STILL selected, go back to the original picture layer. Go Image>Adjust>Desaturate. This takes all the color information out of this layer, but leaves the lighting/reflections in the paint. See the telephone pole in the pics below on the hood of the VehiCross. This also leaves everything that is NOT in the selection area alone, (windows, mirrors if not painted, tires,wheels, you get the idea)

Now, go back to the PAINT layer and get funky with some gradients, some render difference clouds...anything you want. pick bold colors...and have fun :)

http://www.alltel.net/~jayd4wg/pics/vx1_thumb.jpg http://www.alltel.net/~jayd4wg/pics/vx2_thumb.jpg http://www.alltel.net/~jayd4wg/pics/vx3_thumb.jpg http://www.alltel.net/~jayd4wg/pics/vx4_thumb.jpg

Sweet dude... that is nice. I'll have to play around with your directions and see if I can master this.

Thanks Jason!! I just love Photoshop!

Ever since I got my Proton VX, I've been contemplating paint accents... Like black flames from the front or something, or black on top fading into yellow along the bottom (or vice versa)

isuZOOM, with this method and some more masking for the flames you can do alot of nice things, just to play with the look before you commit to something.

I just saw in the auto section at KMart last week a can of paint by ??? called Illusions or something like that. They had a bunch of rattle can flip flop paints, one of which was Ford's Mystic Purple...one of the coolest flipflops ever. It would look hella cool as accents on a black ride...and you can get commercial flame masks rather than masking out your own too. Although, masking out your own isn't hard, just majorly time consuming. Just start with some pinstriping tape, and make the flame outlines, then mask off outside the lines...

Is flip flop the paint that changes colors... like oil in water type of deal? Kinda cool if used correctly.

this is flip flop paint:

http://www.urbanlinkz.com/urbcar46.jpg

when done right, it can look fantastic, or it can look horrible.

another neat paint trick is bowling ball paint. I actually got to meet the guy that started the whole bowling ball thing and know how he does it.

You lay down a base coat of the dark color, then after it's dry, fire on a layer of California Colors "Marbleizer", then immediately hit it with the light color of paint. now take a bunch of plastic wrap rolled up on a pool toy (foam rod) and make sure it's wrinkly. rub this all over the area to be "bowling balled" and then let it dry TWICE the normal drying time. He usually let the car sit in the booth for a FULL day after this step...then hit it with at least six coats of clear to give it some depth. You can go as many as 10-12 coats of clear, if you put them on light enough.