Colors from the Houston Auto Show

[mhuebner]

I had taken these at the Houston Auto Show a few weeks ago and thought I'd get a few opinions. Any thoughts?
Thanks, Mike

[laanba]

These are fun! Nicely done.

[dbphotos]

Very nice. Different approach. I like the colors on #1 and #3 the best.

[Coastal_Mandy]

I really like 'em!

[disboifan]

nice!

[sporkthedork]

Interesting images, indeed.

Glad to see a touch of creativity with auto photos now and again.

(oh, and I'll take the Lamborghini, please)

[mattman]

Nice stuff!!!

[mhuebner]

Thanks for the kind comments. By the way, the Sporkthedork, the Lamborghini was indeed way cool.
Mike

[Joe_Lorenzini]

Genius!

I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm never going to imitate this technique. Wonderful job!! Very creative.

Joe

[Teddington]

That's creative. I assume these are color filters applied in PS. I'm likely to give the technique a try, too.

[kneemeaux]

Nice. You must have been there during the week to get relatively clean shots like these.

I found out the hard way that if there is any CA in your lens those bright lights in Reliant will show it real quick. "L" glass works a lot better.

[mhuebner]

Joe and Teddington, you have my full encouragment to use this. That's why I threw it out there. Here's what I did.

1. All shots are ambient light. There is no flash. To capture the dynamic range, all shots are taken at -2, 0, and +2 bracketing.
2. Depending upon the shot I either used HDR (Photomatix) and/or cutting and pasting between images to get correct exposure on all areas of the car. On HDR processing, I take great pains to make sure they don't look fake. Generally thing like dark grills and/or interiors are taken from the +2 shots.
3. Then I color balanced to bring the colors back to reality. Amazingly the carpet was a very neutral grey so it was pretty easy to get close.
4. I cut the car out from the image and stuck it on a top layer. I'll talk about the windows in a moment.
5. On the background layer, I was going for a grunge look so I applied a heavy Lucisart exposure or Shadow/Highlight (Midtone Contrast) adjustment to bring out the details.
6. Still on the background, I used Hue/Saturation Colorize and adjusted the hue to match the predominant color in the car. I adjusted the saturation until I thought it complemented the car.
7. I adjusted Curves on the background so that it complemented (or contrasted) the car on the top layer. If required there was a couple of areas where I applied a little burning or dodging to better define an edge on the car.
8. I looked at the windows in the car (top layer) to make sure that what was showing through the windows was correct for the colorized background. This normally required "erasing" or partially erasing the window on the car layer to allow more of the background color through.
9. I then checked all my edges around the car to make sure that my "realistic" car blended well with the "grunge" background (remove jaggies or harsh edges.)
10. I merged the layers (or smashed a copy Cntl-A, Cntl/Shft-C, Cntl-V) of the car and the background to make one layer to work with.
11. On some images I created a duplicate layer on top and greatly darkened it with Curves. In this step I made sure to drop the brightest tones (255) down to something like 200 and brought the center tone down until it was pretty dark. I then erased out the center of the dark layer to create a vignetting that focused in on the car. I adjust the opacity until it looked right.
12. I then when back and picked out suitable elements that needed attention. In most images this was the emblems in the grills, the running lights on the Camaro, etc. that needed to be clean and bright. This normally envolves some brightening, constast, and saturation. If there were some contrasting colors in car (turn signals, brakes, etc), I would be sure these also were adjusted.
13. Finally I made final adjustments, sharpening, etc. to improve the overall image.

That's it. Kneemeaux, this was shot on a 40D with the 10-22mm lens. It's a great lens for the crop cameras.

Thanks again everyone.
Mike

[billseye]

Wait... could you run through that again? ;^)
Great job, very unique work!
Although, I would like to see a lower camera angle on the 1st two shots. (my opinion)
Very nice! Thanks for sharing.

[crazyfoo]

I love the Lambo picture, and thanks for posting what you did to the pictures!

[HutchPhoto]

Awesome...


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