When you were matching up the cut out car and the cut out shadow, switching the top layer to blending mode difference makes it way easier, it will be mostly black with colour lines showing the misalignment. You simply move the car til all details go black.
As someone with 50 years of experience in the industry, it's always a treat to find a video that actually teaches me something. I would have never thought of using that menu setting for the multiple exposures. I would have been tripping my trigger and working much harder than you did. Thank you. I will keep that in mind. I am a little disappointed that you didn't show the stacking process you went through to get the image of the car but it's not really a big deal. Thanks again.
This tutorial was huge for me! I've been trying to figure out how to reflect something in one of my landscape images. It'll look much better now. Thanks Lee!
The thing that kept grabbing my attention is the highlights under the car's nose from the white foam core. I would try to bring those down (or if you know it's going to be on black tarmac use black foam core)
@@jjss488 To make things easy: 1) Make the holder that comes from the rear and holds the car up in the air (really, even almost table spoon is enough for that task) so you can swap the backgrounds or undergrounds easily. 2) First add all the white papers and backlit the car to get high contrast for masking (with Affinity Photo a selection tools are industry bests and you just get it done in a seconds) 3) After you have taken your masking shot, you start to swap the background, foreground and underground for the lighting. In this situation He was using a DSLR, that made it actually fairly difficult to work with. Here is again something that Olympus Live Composite is amazing, as you can work in a low light room (just avoid extra highlights) for minutes exposure and do the light painting in good pace as only new light will be added to the photograph and rejected before it overexposes those areas (so you can't add more light than max dynamic range). You would literally work with minutes going back and worth with the model and the camera screen to look where you want to add something more. You can even swap the background/foreground/underground and work with them while exposing the shot. 4) Once you have the photos for masking, for the different reflections and highlights, you create one mask and you use that to combine the multiple different shots, removing the highlights from under the car etc. Morris didn't use the masking than for single shot. He should have used that one and the same mask for every frame that there was. First set the car aligned with the background, mask it (to keep it with background) and then reapply it with every effect of reflections etc. Having a underexposed and underexposed shots and all the masks lets one just to go and do all the fancy things with effects.
For reflections, you're doing those the hard way. Rather than erasing until they're close to the edges of the car, you can use the already cut out car to make a mask so none of the "reflection" is polluting the scene. Further, in free transform, once you have the stuff that will become the reflection, you can just grab the bottom edge and slide it above the top to flip it. Then you don't have to remember how to flip. (Conveniently, this allows you to expand or compress the reflection to better match the angle of the reflecting surface.) I'd also say that your speculars are too hard for a really good look. To reduce that a bit, you could put an arched piece of Translum above the car and still use the same lighting technique. The diffusion would soften the hot reflections significantly.
I legitimately have this exact same toy car and I've been struggling to find a good scene to put it in. I now have plans for this weekend to go down to the pier here in Cleveland and grab a city skyline photo with some good foreground! I also learned a few photoshop basics from this one that will save me a ton of time. Thanks Lee!
When I was in high school (circa 1980s), I took a photo of my slot cars on a banking turn of my track. I put my Mamiya right on the floor to get that low perspective. Used my desk lamp for light and I was using 400-speed B&W film. When I showed the final print to my instructor. He bawked at my poor composition. I was devastated until I mentioned to him that those were toy cars. He didn't believe me. So I showed him an overhead establishing shot. His jaw dropped to the floor. I found my new talent. :-)
Great end result. Focus stacking may have come in handy, and using night shots is always tricky thanks to the multiple light sources with multiple colors, but great work with what you had.
im gonna be honest here , u did an amazing job and like u said its new , and i really love it but it still looks photoshooped lol , but regardless great vid and thanku for it , i learnd new stuff today about photoshop and how to use the light ! keep it up !!!!!
Idea - what if u took two photos, one with the car on a clean white background for a negative and one where you actually print out the potential background and put the car in it to get realistic and legit reflection w/o editing? Could that work?
Nice idea, but I would do it a bit differently. First find a background then try to light the toy car as realistically as possible considering the scene the car will be sitting in. There are no neon lights or long diffusers to create those long reflections in a cityscape. It would be spot lights that gives reflections. So maybe use a strobe light mode and move it around fast? If it's a long enough shutter it would catch spotlight reflections. Also the rims reflect nothing (white and too bright), and the white foamcore reflected way too much from the bottom. The light bleed gives it away. In a dim scene the disc brakes would be a lot darker, as well as the interior. Most of the problems would be solved with a dark grey foamcore. There is something wrong with the blue windshield it needs to be transparent. There are a lot of little details that would need fixing in order to really mask the toy, but this is a nice tutorial nevertheless.
Sure, you could easily spend a couple of days working away at this and make it much better...but this is a great result for an hour's work, and is an inspiring and fun exercise. Very enjoyable!
Why not reduce the white hot light on the car? Your the pro and im an amature but it seems like reducing the light would totally make it fit in better with the shot, just a thought, still cool video, thanks for making it, cheers!
Loved the video! Just a quick tip in Photoshop, once you finish outlining your subject with the pen tool, you can save that path by double clicking it and renaming it in the paths panel. That allows you to re-use the path (by right clicking it in the paths panel) instead of having to manually brush out the mask for your reflections.
With that much effort on taking photos, post-production, lighting and equipment, even a regular shoe box would have looked like a real car. But man you somehow managed to create a little kids passion project.
This was a pretty cool tutorial, my only note for the photoshop section was I would have liked to see you darken the car slightly. I feel it looked a little off because it was much brighter than its surroundings and messing with the highlights in levels would have made this look even more realistic
I tried a couple of the Tamron lenses, including the new 70-200 f2.8 G2 and found them to not be as sharp as Nikon lenses. I returned that lens and bought the Nikon, big difference. The Tamron had such bad back focusing that It couldn’t be fixed. Cool video.
I did this 10 years ago with my friend's toy car in his driveway. I showed him the picture and he was like "Who pulled up when I was sleep?" It's all about the angles.
i have a better way to line up the two images @ 8:40. the Difference transfer mode! the most underutilized tool in all of photoshop. set the top layer to difference. anywhere that is the same value between two layers is black, different is white. you can nudge and really easily find the point where they line up.
". . . and I think, the average person looking at that shot would not be able to tell that it's a toy car." Ha-ha-ha, the joke's on you! The city is a miniature!
What's up with the right side of the background ? Is that a blurred boat passing by or something because of long exposure ? Then the smoke wouldn't work and should be blurry as well.
Sorry to be critical here...but if you knew you were going to composite it onto a dark background, why did you use a white surface for under the car? The reflections would have matched way better with a dark grey.
I'm triggerd by the bottom half of the car being the brightest part of the body when it should be the top since the bottom is reflecting what is underneath the car it should be a lot darker
9.58, if youve watched the movie where its from, you can see that the car is actually tilted forwards, and so, the wheels are, when you tild it horizontally, not on the same height, so it looks shavy and not real.
I think it turned out ok, for what he used an time. I would have added lights under the car an fender wheels like dark blue. An added a moon in the background that looked cool. But I think he did a nice job. I might give it a try.
So many negative reviews - I got a lot out of this tutorial. Especially on blending modes and use of white to separate the subject from the background using blending mode. Also, the idea is very inspirational. So for a quick tutorial and inspiration, I enjoyed it. One note, the lights used here are expensive. The better alternative would be Lume Cube. Less expensive, you can control the lights using your iPhone, and lots of accessories.
I think with the lighting on the car it would have been better to place it in a daylight situation. What you also could have done is to go online and look for a real life situation to get an idea on how it supposed to look, shadows/lighting/color. To match 2 layers position, you can use the difference blending mode. Move the layer until it turns black to get a perfect match. It's a great idea tough. I know it takes a lot of time making these videos.
the car's White balance is so different that you should start from that Lee. Also the side of the car should be more lit on the top than the bottom, seems odd.
Came here to say this - the colour balance of the car and the scene both need to match in order to be convincing. In this case I think nudging the car's WB towards green would have helped.
Yes because with the pen tool you can actually control what pixels get masked out rather than relying on just the white enough pixels getting chosen. You can play with the range but you run the risk of part of the car with bright reflection getting selected then having to go de-select etc.
If somebody has any ideas, how to make it blend even more to the backround, please share them here :) My suggest: something that covers a tiny bit of the car, like a lamp post, trash bin, car park barrier. (If it already exists in the backround (/foreground))
Not sure what you're asking.. You could potentially shoot some blurry photo of leaves or something up close to the lens, and use a similar blending mode to look like you're shooting the car around the corner of a tree or some plants... just a thought. Might take some work to get the leaves (or whatever) to cut out properly so you can move it around in photoshop
Nick Arora Yeah I was also annoyed by that highlight under there haha. I think I want to try shooting on some rainy day, or snowy day later in December, and try to photoshop some snow between the tires
Mario Cartolano I was basicly asking: how to make the illusion even stronger. I think blending a car into a snowy landscape, by adding snow to the tires could make a svery strong illusion. For example
And you need to color grade separate elements too. Match the overall exposure and color temperature of a car itself and just then color grade whole composited image. By the way it's always easier to match exposure, shadows and other non color information then you look in to black and white image.
As some people said. Waaaay too much white under the car, from the foam. The wheels are too bright. That would have to be toned down quite a bit. But, some nice techniques there.
"wouldn't believe is a toy car" *chooses a cartoony version of the dodge charger*
Love job
When you were matching up the cut out car and the cut out shadow, switching the top layer to blending mode difference makes it way easier, it will be mostly black with colour lines showing the misalignment. You simply move the car til all details go black.
As someone with 50 years of experience in the industry, it's always a treat to find a video that actually teaches me something. I would have never thought of using that menu setting for the multiple exposures. I would have been tripping my trigger and working much harder than you did. Thank you. I will keep that in mind. I am a little disappointed that you didn't show the stacking process you went through to get the image of the car but it's not really a big deal. Thanks again.
This tutorial was huge for me! I've been trying to figure out how to reflect something in one of my landscape images. It'll look much better now. Thanks Lee!
The thing that kept grabbing my attention is the highlights under the car's nose from the white foam core. I would try to bring those down (or if you know it's going to be on black tarmac use black foam core)
I wouldnt use black foam core. Itll make it difficult to cut out the subject from the background unless your up for using the pen tool
That also had me wondering, is he going to take care of that white spot under the front. All in all it is a Great Video and a beautiful picture.
@@jjss488 To make things easy:
1) Make the holder that comes from the rear and holds the car up in the air (really, even almost table spoon is enough for that task) so you can swap the backgrounds or undergrounds easily.
2) First add all the white papers and backlit the car to get high contrast for masking (with Affinity Photo a selection tools are industry bests and you just get it done in a seconds)
3) After you have taken your masking shot, you start to swap the background, foreground and underground for the lighting. In this situation He was using a DSLR, that made it actually fairly difficult to work with. Here is again something that Olympus Live Composite is amazing, as you can work in a low light room (just avoid extra highlights) for minutes exposure and do the light painting in good pace as only new light will be added to the photograph and rejected before it overexposes those areas (so you can't add more light than max dynamic range). You would literally work with minutes going back and worth with the model and the camera screen to look where you want to add something more. You can even swap the background/foreground/underground and work with them while exposing the shot.
4) Once you have the photos for masking, for the different reflections and highlights, you create one mask and you use that to combine the multiple different shots, removing the highlights from under the car etc.
Morris didn't use the masking than for single shot. He should have used that one and the same mask for every frame that there was. First set the car aligned with the background, mask it (to keep it with background) and then reapply it with every effect of reflections etc. Having a underexposed and underexposed shots and all the masks lets one just to go and do all the fancy things with effects.
A.J add to it the white piece of foam in the rear wheel (on the inside)....
exactly what I thought
For reflections, you're doing those the hard way. Rather than erasing until they're close to the edges of the car, you can use the already cut out car to make a mask so none of the "reflection" is polluting the scene. Further, in free transform, once you have the stuff that will become the reflection, you can just grab the bottom edge and slide it above the top to flip it. Then you don't have to remember how to flip. (Conveniently, this allows you to expand or compress the reflection to better match the angle of the reflecting surface.)
I'd also say that your speculars are too hard for a really good look. To reduce that a bit, you could put an arched piece of Translum above the car and still use the same lighting technique. The diffusion would soften the hot reflections significantly.
I legitimately have this exact same toy car and I've been struggling to find a good scene to put it in. I now have plans for this weekend to go down to the pier here in Cleveland and grab a city skyline photo with some good foreground! I also learned a few photoshop basics from this one that will save me a ton of time. Thanks Lee!
16:12
the white reflection on the front bumper and that the lower half of the car, especially the rims, is way to bright could've been easily fixed
When I was in high school (circa 1980s), I took a photo of my slot cars on a banking turn of my track. I put my Mamiya right on the floor to get that low perspective. Used my desk lamp for light and I was using 400-speed B&W film. When I showed the final print to my instructor. He bawked at my poor composition. I was devastated until I mentioned to him that those were toy cars. He didn't believe me. So I showed him an overhead establishing shot. His jaw dropped to the floor. I found my new talent. :-)
This may take a lot of time, however the end result is very satisfying!
Very cool tutorial; I like your approach to photoshop, please do more like this.
Some good concepts covered here for composite work. I think the haters are missing the point, which is to take the idea and run with it !
cheers👍👍
It may not be the best end result but I learned a lot on photoshop itself with this. Great video!
Great tips but honestly, you dont need to use a macro lens when that far away
Great end result. Focus stacking may have come in handy, and using night shots is always tricky thanks to the multiple light sources with multiple colors, but great work with what you had.
This ROCKS! Do some Batmobiles, Action Jackson, or G.I. Joe photo shoots!
That came out great! Darkening the brake rotors to remove the plastic look would put the icing on the cake for me. Cheers!
im gonna be honest here , u did an amazing job and like u said its new , and i really love it but it still looks photoshooped lol , but regardless great vid and thanku for it , i learnd new stuff today about photoshop and how to use the light ! keep it up !!!!!
Awesome job! ❤😊
Why don’t you use blend if? That may work much better.
I thought A. Iniesta doing UA-cam videos 😂😂
Hahahaha,Yea' When He's Not On The Field He Messes Around With Toy Cars & Shit Hahahaha
Why the fuck did I read it as A -dot- iniesta
Idea - what if u took two photos, one with the car on a clean white background for a negative and one where you actually print out the potential background and put the car in it to get realistic and legit reflection w/o editing? Could that work?
Ok, I never leave comments, but as a model building/photographer nerd myself, I loved this. Thanks!
Nice idea, but I would do it a bit differently. First find a background then try to light the toy car as realistically as possible considering the scene the car will be sitting in. There are no neon lights or long diffusers to create those long reflections in a cityscape. It would be spot lights that gives reflections. So maybe use a strobe light mode and move it around fast? If it's a long enough shutter it would catch spotlight reflections. Also the rims reflect nothing (white and too bright), and the white foamcore reflected way too much from the bottom. The light bleed gives it away. In a dim scene the disc brakes would be a lot darker, as well as the interior. Most of the problems would be solved with a dark grey foamcore. There is something wrong with the blue windshield it needs to be transparent. There are a lot of little details that would need fixing in order to really mask the toy, but this is a nice tutorial nevertheless.
Sure, you could easily spend a couple of days working away at this and make it much better...but this is a great result for an hour's work, and is an inspiring and fun exercise. Very enjoyable!
Hey! You know what you are crazy at this. I loved it. Given the amount of time and efforts put in. Hats off...👏👏👏
“Sports car” 😂
?
MD Builds I actually am I know quite a lot actually but I just don’t see the issue with calling a muscle car a sports car like don’t be such a bozo
Adam Adam people are just childish thinking oh yeah I’m a car guy and you’re stupid. Like bruh we get it, it’s a muscle car.
Great video. Concise and very helpful. Perfection is over-rated. Helpful is under-rated. Thanks for taking the time to do this!
Just came across this video. Really interesting, thx!
The photoshop skills were impressive! But! This is a 1968 Dodge Charger RT with a Staggered wheel set up, so it supposed to look tilted to the front.
having staggered wheels doesn't mean the car will have a "rake." I do agree with you though, this vehicle has a rake from the factory.
It’s a 1970
Why not reduce the white hot light on the car? Your the pro and im an amature but it seems like reducing the light would totally make it fit in better with the shot, just a thought, still cool video, thanks for making it, cheers!
Awesome Composition
Enjoyed the creative work that went into this little project. It's always fun to see what one can do with Photoshop and basic ideas and run with them.
Loved the video!
Just a quick tip in Photoshop, once you finish outlining your subject with the pen tool, you can save that path by double clicking it and renaming it in the paths panel. That allows you to re-use the path (by right clicking it in the paths panel) instead of having to manually brush out the mask for your reflections.
** "It's extremely bright!"... Let me just shine it on my face real quick.. Ahh that feels good yeah that's it that's the spot
Good video haha
That photo was amazing. I’m gonna try it myself for sure
The door gaps give it away, your work is excellent.
With that much effort on taking photos, post-production, lighting and equipment, even a regular shoe box would have looked like a real car. But man you somehow managed to create a little kids passion project.
Is this comment positive or negative?
This was a pretty cool tutorial, my only note for the photoshop section was I would have liked to see you darken the car slightly. I feel it looked a little off because it was much brighter than its surroundings and messing with the highlights in levels would have made this look even more realistic
I tried a couple of the Tamron lenses, including the new 70-200 f2.8 G2 and found them to not be as sharp as Nikon lenses. I returned that lens and bought the Nikon, big difference. The Tamron had such bad back focusing that It couldn’t be fixed. Cool video.
the shot looks great. (it also doesn't hurt that it's one of my favorite cars and always looks good.)
I did this 10 years ago with my friend's toy car in his driveway. I showed him the picture and he was like "Who pulled up when I was sleep?" It's all about the angles.
Amazing idea😮
Is this your first time using Photoshop?
looks good to me. Some of us who know about tires and such may think that something is off, but it's a $15 model car for goodness sake.
i have a better way to line up the two images @ 8:40.
the Difference transfer mode! the most underutilized tool in all of photoshop.
set the top layer to difference. anywhere that is the same value between two layers is black, different is white.
you can nudge and really easily find the point where they line up.
Wow great tip!
You should make a tutorial with Felix Hernandez!
Rene de la Garza they should just get Felix in for a tutorial. His work is AMAZING
@@jamesfindlay7150 I know, his work is amazing, one of the best.
I'd pay for that!
@@DrgnSlyr Felix has a 2-part training on a website to do this, it costed my friend and I 20 bucks each course.
He has tutorials. They are paid and in Spanish.
Not bad. Before playing with the background. re-aline the door better and decrease the door seams for a more realistic image. Thanks for sharing
Johnny Sins became a photographer?
". . . and I think, the average person looking at that shot would not be able to tell that it's a toy car." Ha-ha-ha, the joke's on you! The city is a miniature!
What's up with the right side of the background ? Is that a blurred boat passing by or something because of long exposure ? Then the smoke wouldn't work and should be blurry as well.
Sorry to be critical here...but if you knew you were going to composite it onto a dark background, why did you use a white surface for under the car? The reflections would have matched way better with a dark grey.
8:49 When you activate try hard mode...
Brillient mate. I love this video. Gunna try it out with a couple of models of my own. Cheers
I'm triggerd by the bottom half of the car being the brightest part of the body when it should be the top since the bottom is reflecting what is underneath the car it should be a lot darker
I think with shock therapy, heavy medication and lifelong counseling you'll be able to overcome being triggered.
@@mavfan1 I hope so :'(
Yeah, it was killing me too.
@@mavfan1 LOL, that's funny!
my eye kept going back to that area as well, kept reminding myself, its just a tutorial showing the basics. lol.
Cool idea
The white spot on the front bumper kind of bugs me.
AWESOME! I want to do one photo of these with my small Mini Cooper, thanks!!!!
Wow big change up... pretty kool...
வீடியோ மிகவும் பயனுள்ளதாக இருந்தது மிக்க நன்றி 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
R.மனோகர் சென்னை .
Very useful this video sir big thank you 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
R.MANOHAR
Chennai.
that moment when you were about to flip the image...hahaha laughed a lot..its the same story always
great job.
Nice. I love to put my computerscreen in the background to avoid photoshop.
Great video.
Thanks for sharing your skills, a very helpful video. Taken a lot of ideas from you.
I lost it when he said "sports car"
I thought it was just me
9.58, if youve watched the movie where its from, you can see that the car is actually tilted forwards, and so, the wheels are, when you tild it horizontally, not on the same height, so it looks shavy and not real.
Outstanding
Well done my friend
This looks great
A couple of days ago i was thinking to do the same thing, Nice Job!
Definitely gonna try this!
I think it turned out ok, for what he used an time. I would have added lights under the car an fender wheels like dark blue. An added a moon in the background that looked cool. But I think he did a nice job. I might give it a try.
So many negative reviews - I got a lot out of this tutorial. Especially on blending modes and use of white to separate the subject from the background using blending mode. Also, the idea is very inspirational. So for a quick tutorial and inspiration, I enjoyed it. One note, the lights used here are expensive. The better alternative would be Lume Cube. Less expensive, you can control the lights using your iPhone, and lots of accessories.
I think with the lighting on the car it would have been better to place it in a daylight situation. What you also could have done is to go online and look for a real life situation to get an idea on how it supposed to look, shadows/lighting/color. To match 2 layers position, you can use the difference blending mode. Move the layer until it turns black to get a perfect match. It's a great idea tough. I know it takes a lot of time making these videos.
What about the white reflection at the front bottom part of the car? This gives it out quite a lot
A peace of computer paper? jajajjajaja te mamaste pinche Lee.
you forgot about the wheels... i think that wouldve gave it the last touch, but no picture is perfect - Great work
thanks!
7:05 is this movement really done by the stabilization ?
1969 dodge charger. Love it...
Kind of a fun project!
Great tutorial. The only thing I feel is lacking is the look of the lower front of the car just behind the bumper - it still look "out of place"
Bugged me too, yeah. I kept wanting to reach through the screen and fix it.
the car's White balance is so different that you should start from that Lee. Also the side of the car should be more lit on the top than the bottom, seems odd.
Came here to say this - the colour balance of the car and the scene both need to match in order to be convincing. In this case I think nudging the car's WB towards green would have helped.
You can learn couple of tips by watching how Michael Paul Smith sets up and takes his photos
The white edge under the front of the car bugged me throughout the whole edit. Great proof of concept though!
Now it's my wallpaper. 😊
Nice!!
Interesting project to try
Good video 👌😍
so relateable, any time im copositing with a car, you can never be satisfied HAHAHA, you always find something to fix or add
#salute - That was nice - Great Job
7:35 is this really the right selection tool, considering the background is all pure white??
Yes because with the pen tool you can actually control what pixels get masked out rather than relying on just the white enough pixels getting chosen. You can play with the range but you run the risk of part of the car with bright reflection getting selected then having to go de-select etc.
Amazing
You shouldn’t have straightened it out, hot rods are built with a rake to them, they are lower in the front for a reason.
That was awesome
Question can I do the same with a smaller car using macro expansion tubes I don't have the funds for a lens
What was the name of the other photographer again?
If somebody has any ideas, how to make it blend even more to the backround, please share them here :) My suggest: something that covers a tiny bit of the car, like a lamp post, trash bin, car park barrier. (If it already exists in the backround (/foreground))
Not sure what you're asking.. You could potentially shoot some blurry photo of leaves or something up close to the lens, and use a similar blending mode to look like you're shooting the car around the corner of a tree or some plants... just a thought. Might take some work to get the leaves (or whatever) to cut out properly so you can move it around in photoshop
Nick Arora Yeah I was also annoyed by that highlight under there haha. I think I want to try shooting on some rainy day, or snowy day later in December, and try to photoshop some snow between the tires
Mario Cartolano I was basicly asking: how to make the illusion even stronger. I think blending a car into a snowy landscape, by adding snow to the tires could make a svery strong illusion. For example
And you need to color grade separate elements too. Match the overall exposure and color temperature of a car itself and just then color grade whole composited image. By the way it's always easier to match exposure, shadows and other non color information then you look in to black and white image.
@Nick Arora yeah that part annoyed me. Made it look like the mask around the car wasnt clean
what if you just make your table look like garage floor tiles and get a garage background
As some people said. Waaaay too much white under the car, from the foam. The wheels are too bright. That would have to be toned down quite a bit. But, some nice techniques there.