Photoshopping guitars

[tas9195]

I have been photoshoping guitars for a while.(taking images and layering them on top. I have a few things that I would like to perfect on them, but not quiet sure how to go about it in the best and most efficient way. I am hoping you guys can come together and help me. I want to get this down to help my friend who builds awesome guitars. He wants to get into custom designs and this way I can show what a custom design would look like to a customer. First I want to know how I can get the areas where the light reflects on the body to show through on the image which is placed over the guitar without the original color showing through with it. Here is a before and after to give you an idea. The second thing would be how to erase the image that is covering the strings since the strings are skinny what would be the best way to erase the image so the strings show through without erasing the image around it. To make it realistic. I hope you guys can help me and if you need more examples I can help. I will load a few more pics of what I have done.

 

[tas9195]

Here are some more pics I have done.

 

[tas9195]

As you can see none of these have the light reflections to add depth.

 

[RTContent]

If the body of the original guitar you used has these contours visible already, you can change the blending mode of the new design layer to overlay/screen. If the original color of the guitar is something other than light grey or white you may need to play with the levels/brightness and desaturate to get the desired effect.

 

[Paul]

use the pen tool to go over the strings, but set the erasure to the same width as the strings, Then when you have applied the pen tool lines stroke the path with the drop down select the erasure option, just an idea.
As for light layers i applied a new layer and did as the guitar strings but then converted to the brush option when stroking the path, again another option there are other ways.