Monday, April 27, 2015

The Jetta Experiment

I love creating in Photoshop.  I work it into my workflow as part of the creative process and add some style to an otherwise normal photo. My downfall is that I don't always know when to quit.  Over the weekend, I wanted to experiment with some car photography to alter things in a much more dramatic way than I normally would. 

To start, I chose a clean picture of my buddy's Jetta I took last year.  It's not a bad looking car, and I'm pretty happy with how the original photo turned out.  So, what could I do to make it more..... dramatic? I started simple. Color!  Since the car had a clean silver paint job, changing the color to a bright metallic red was as easy as a few adjustment layers. Now that I had it looking a little more dramatic, I needed to make it a bit more exciting. I've always been a fan of HRE wheels, and found some clean photos of a style I liked online. Big wheels needed a slightly more aggressive body, so I added a much more aggressive front bumper as well. After blending the bumper, wheels and tires into the new red body, I lowered the car to complete the new look.  Now that I was pretty happy with the car, I adjusted the crop, tweaked the lighting and touched up a few odds and ends. 

Normally, I never alter a car this much for a photo, but this was a fun change of pace to push my Photoshop a bit more than I usually do. Ironically, Mike wasn't a huge fan.  Hope you guys like it more than Mike did! :)

        

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