Color change on cars...

[noslenwerd]

This was my very first photoshop project that i did about 5 or 6 months ago... My question in general though is, whats the best way to do a color change? i usually just select the entire body, and change the color balance, but i know there is a better way to make it look more realistic...

Also, how would you do the chameleon paint smoothly? Where on different curves of the car it appears a different color

I'm still pretty new so when explaining, please break it down

Thanks

 

[noslenwerd]

and after

 

[Welles]

Hi noslenwerd. Welcome to the forums. Heck you don't need any tips as far as I'm concerned. That's the best, first Photoshop job I've ever seen! (I've taught a fair number of beginners, too.) As far as I'm concerned, you are a PS prodigy.
8))

 

[Welles]

Now to answer your question about color change, it depends on the image. Taking your initial one, I used Image > Adjustment > Replace Color in about 10 seconds. OK 30 seconds with resaving using Save For Web...

If you wanted to use a Camo effect, you would have to distort it to match the planes of the car using a displacement map or maybe the liquify tool followed by using a blend mode. A cheapo job could be achieved with just a selection and blend mode selecting the vertical and horizontal planes separately and transforming the horizontal so it gave a sense of perspective. You also could maybe saving the camo as a pattern and using it in the layer styles dialog.

Anywho...here's a 10 second color change...

 

[noslenwerd]

Wow thank you so much for that compliment I'll post up some more of my nonsense sometime

It took me almost an entire day, and i had some step by step tutorials to guide me (found here)

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

Oh and i think you may have read my post about the chameleon paint wrong, and you may have thought i said camo Thanks for the info though.

Here is an example of what I would like to be able to do in Photoshop



Thanks again Welles!

 

[Welles]

Oh and i think you may have read my post about the chameleon paint wrong, and you may have thought i said camo

Well, you're right I thought camo because I've never heard of chameleon paint jobs before. That's a new technique to me. (I'm rather out of it.)

Anyway, I'd suggest some approach like this. Start with your base color picked out on the vehicle and create a selection of all the paint parts.

At that point I'd save the selection as an alpha channel by going to the Channels palette and using the button at the bottom which says 'save selection as channel' when you hold your cursor over it.

Then select the brush tool and use a soft brush (0% hardness) with a very low opacity. Pick your next color.

Make a new layer.

Paint your color on the new layer and start by changing your Blend mode in the Layers palette to Screen or Multiply. We're going into full experimentation mode here...

In 'full experimentation mode' try duplicating the layer on which you've painted to build up the color... several times even. Try different blend modes. Use Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur at a pretty high setting to even out the effect. Mess around with Levels and maybe Curves to increase highlights.

Quit while you are ahead!

Here's a quick experiment...

 

[noslenwerd]

Great... thanks again welles...

One thing, how do i change the hardness of my brush? and what opacity do you suggest using? i know you said "low" but how low?

I know how to change the brush sets and whatnot, but havent quite figured out where the hardness attribute is

Thanks

 

[Welles]

The simple way is to A click on the brush in the Options Bar and B move the hardness slider. You may wish to investigate the Brushes palette at this time, too. It allows options to absolutely perform magic with brushes. The main tip there is to click on all the listed words in the left hand column and new options appear in the right. As to opacity, I used about a 10% and let the color build up a bit. Then I duplicated the color layer a few times, experimented with blend modes, threw away one or two of the color layers... It was really an experiment.