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How to achieve this look?


slabu-sorin-daniel

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Hi everyone I'm a big car enthusiast and I like shooting cars. But no matter what I try I can' t seem to achieve this classy, film look that I see in the photos of pro's. I don't know what the ingredients are, tinting, contrast, maybe some weird secret procedure you have to do that nobody really knows. Please help me :)
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peta62

Guru
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Hello, I think it would help to post some of your photos to show the difference as a starting point to edit.
 

Paul

Former Member
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They all look like renders to me anyway:thumbsup:
 

Tom Mann

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It would be a lot easier if u could post one without any PP effects at all on it, say, a SOOC (straight out of the camera) jpg, or even better the raw file for the picture you posted.

Tom M
 

slabu-sorin-daniel

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Thanks for trying to help me out, couldn't get the original full rez pic to upload here, neither the raw so this is a scaled down straight from the camera pic.
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Tom Mann

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Unfortunately, there are some critical differences between the example photos you posted and your own photo.

(a) In three of the four example pix, everything except the car is almost completely desaturated, whereas in the remaining example photo, the bkgnd is not desaturated.

(b) The car in all of the example photos clearly has a color (ie, cream), whereas in your photo, it is essentially colorless (ie, black).

(c) The car in all of the example photos is light toned, so it's easy to see detail in it, as is. In contrast, it is difficult to see as much detail in a black car without major tonal tweaks.

(d) The background in the example photos is quite sharp, where in yours, the background is slightly blurry.

(e) Your image contains two cars, whereas all the example photos only contain one car. Cropping the red car out of your image removed important "breathing room" around the central subject.

Because of these, and other differences, some parts of the overall look of the example images simply can't be replicated on your image.

So, to serve as the launching point for further discussion, I made some quick tweaks to your image. For example, I even went so far as to push the saturation of the car through the roof to add some color to it (...it's now mostly blue, but it's also picking up strongly colored reflections of nearby objects) to help it stand out from a desaturated background. Anyway, see if there are any aspects of my tweaked version along the lines of what you had in mind. Don't forget to click on the in-line preview to view it at the full resolution of the version you submitted.

Tom M
 

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peta62

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TomMann has done a heck of a job, but I think you cannot ( or you have to be a super-hyper-guru ) fix in Photoshop what you did not do in the shot. First thing coming to my mind seeing those first two pictures is the structure behind, third from the composition point looks like yours, the fourth has plenty of reflections coming from the bridge. I think you can hardly do a super picture from an average shot. The difference I see in the third picture ( and the rest too ) is they have a white car, you have black, while the background is comparable. A it gives a different feel from the whole picture, B white has much more interesting reflections ( hat down TomMann for recreating them ). I know this is a Photosphop forum, mainly devoted to editing tweeks, but I still think the shot is fundamental. Of course the huge difference is they can put any car anywhere they need, while you probably take photos of cars you find, but who said there is any justice in the world ;-) ?
 

Tom Mann

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I couldn't agree more, Peta: There's an old American expression, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.", and that certainly applies to photography.

It's always better to do as much as possible "in-camera" and minimize post processing tweaking. For example, sure there are ways to change a black car to a cream colored car, but (a) it's a pain in the neck and takes lots of time and good skills, and (b) no matter how good you are, the results will almost always be worse than just taking a photo of a cream colored car in the first place. As you point out, site selection for the shoot, lighting (both available, added, and modified available light (eg, with reflectors, scrims, etc.)) are all absolutely essential components to a good auto shoot.

Cheers,

Tom M
 

Tom Mann

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PS - BTW, should you ever need to post a large file again here in PSG, just zip it, and then upload the zipped file exactly the same way as you upload a small JPG. The forum uploading software will complain that it doesn't recognize the zip file type, but just ignore the warning and continue on. I think there is an upper limit to file sizes (...somewhere around 50 Meg, as I recall), but that if you stay within that limit, you should have no problems.

T
 

slabu-sorin-daniel

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Thanks a lot for the effort you've put to try to help. I'm not a newbie, nor am I a pro, somewhere in the middle. I posted that audi pic just because it had a similar background, that doesn't mean I shoot cars on the streets haha. Here are some of my recent shots, tried to imitate that separation between the car and the background since day 1 but never seemed to quite get it right, I always tried to do it by adding contrast to the background.
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Tom Mann

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FWIW, whenever I'm trying to draw attention to the subject, I almost always DECREASE the contrast of the background, not increase it, as you have been trying. This is what I did on this photo. Give it a try -- you may like it.

Tom
 

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