Photoshop Tips and Tricks.

Hello again. As requested this is the photoshop tips and tricks thread, for people who want to improve a bit, make better shops, and do it quicker and easier. Sorry if this seems a bit long, but you'll (hopefully) appreciate it after a few shops.

Time for some basics first;
Firstly, it seems like some of you have Photoshop, possibly the best commercially available imagery program in existence. If you do not have it, please get it. You can download Elements (trial) from Adobe's website free of charge, or go down to the local computer store and ask for an older, cheap version of Elements (2.0 or better). Don't be worried you're not going to have all the tools you need - I've use Elements 2, and that's probably all you'll ever need.

Second thing, learn the important hotkeys. And by that I mean these 7:
Ctrl+U Brings up the Hue/Saturation/Luminosity menu. Here you chance the hue, colour and brightness. Also, note the 'colourise' option. This is usefull for making the selected area/layer the same colour, and colouring parts and pieces.
Ctrl+Shift+U Desaturates the whole selected area/layer (makes it black/white)
Ctrl+E Flattens the image; making what you see into one layer just as it appears. This is really usefull if you've finished a part and are ready to move one (ending up with 10+layers can be a pain in the ass).
Ctrl+Shift+I 'selects everything you haven't selected'. IE if you select a circle, this will select everything except the circle. You can trim of bits of you selection with this using the lassoo tool)
Ctrl++ or Ctrl+- zooms the camera in or out respectively. You should always do your work at 200% or more (zoomed in quite a lot), it allows you to work in far more detail that possible at 100% or less, resulting in much better image changing quality.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V The good old copy and paste. Useful if you want a specific colour or gradient, and since it's on it's own layer, it can be deleted if you don't like it without screwing the rest of the image up.
Finally, Ctrl+Z, the UNDO function. This will, undoubtedly, be the one you use most, and the one reason computers are so popular (make sure you set your history to more than one step back, go for at least 5 if you can).

Thirdly, start with a larger image - higher resolution means you can work cleaner, and achieve a better end result. Try to use at least 1024x780 pixels, but don't bother going over 1600x1200, though. This goes for any donor images too, low-res parts look really bad on good-res images.

Now that we've got the basics covered, time for the tips and tricks.

Colour changing:
There's a few ways to do this, and all start with the same step. Select the part you want to change colour, and copy-paste it so it is a seperate layer (protip; select a rectangle around the car, then cut out the lights/wheels/glass/etc, it's faster). That way you only have to worry about the colour or what you want to change and nothing else.
(These first few only work if you don't change the luminosity)
One way is to grab that layer, Ctrl+U and mess with the hue. Unfortunately, doe to the harmonic nature of photons, the best results only come from a hue level of +/-120 and 0, and is gets kinda distorted the further you are from those numbers.
If that is the case, try the colourise function - and just play with the hue/saturation.
Those will suffice for making basically all gloss paints (and some metallic ones).
If you want metallic/silver paint, and you didn't start off with metallic/silver paint in the original picture, go to enhance > adjust brightness/contrast > brightness/contrast, and increase the contrast a bit. Then you can apply either of those first two.
(These next few are if you want darker/lighter/pearl paint)
If you want your car darker, grab that copied ayer, and change it to 'Multiply' or 'Darken'. This darkens you car without losing the reflection detail you'd normally lose if you just decreased the brightness. This can also be done more than once if you want a darker car.
Lighting is very similar - except now you use 'Screen' or 'Lighten'. One other way that sometimes works is to colourise that layer to yellow (hue~50) and set the layer to luminosity (this, again, is due to photon harmonics).
Pearl is quite easy once you know what you want. For this you'll need at least 2 coloured layers - one base and one top. The base layer should be the base colour of whatever colour you want, and it should be set to 'normal'. The top layer should be what you want your Pearl tint to be, and this is where it gets a bit messy - you'll either want soft light, hard light, overlay or linear/colour burn - you'll have to scroll through those to find the one you want.
Now, mix and match those techniques and experiment with different colours and combinations.

Lowering
This is fairly straightforward - select the body of the car (make sure it's one layer; protip: this should be the first thing you do when you start a chop, because otherwise you'll end up lowering only bits of your car), and the background from the bumper level up, so you don't get bits of the car showing through, and copy-paste it. Then select the new layer (the car and background) and move it down as far as you want. Don't forget to clean up the wheel-wells though, sometime they end up showing the original as well, so black that bit out.

Detail Design.
It's easy to forget the details, but giving them a once-over makes you chop look a lot better. Removing the badges, indicators, headlight washers and giving the lights a bit of tint can really help. The badges/indicators/washers can be dealt with using the blur tool - select what you want gone as closely as you can, and blur the sorrounding colours over it, being mindful of any wanted lines of the car it's near. Headlights are just as easy - select the whole light, and go to the brightness/contrast slidres mentioned earlier, and lower the brightness and up the contrast (protip; contrast changes should be roughly negative half of the brightness changes, ie if you lower the brightness to -40, up the contrast to about 20).

Chop Top.
Big, bulging roof-lines are, unfortunately, far too common. Select the roof and anything above it, copy-paste, and then use the transform tool decrease the height. This instantly makes your car look sportier and sleeker, though unfortunately every time you see that car from now on in real life you'll think the roof is too tall.

Smoothing Donor Images
When you bring a body part in from another image, odds are it won't fit perfectly. Sometime the smudge tool can be used to blur it in, but I've found the motion blur tool is way better, giving a far smoother gradient and change. Select the edge of what you want to blur in, and go filters > blur > motion blur. The angle should be set to roughly the same as the panel (pretty self-explanitory), and the distance shouldn't need to be over 25 pixels (but try other distances, you've got the undo tool!). Protip: For smoothest results, roughly 50% of your selection should be on the new, imported layer, that way it has the most even amount of pixels to smooth .

That's all for now (it's 10:30pm here lol), but I'll post a few more things tomorrow.

If you have any questions at all, or would like me to explain something, don't hesitate to post it, and I'll do my best to help.

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