OP: "...but what about the background - the bridge and buildings etc they have the same effect as the car ..."
Not to my eye. To me, the processing of the subject looks completely different from the processing of the background. The subjects are very smooth, with well defined edges, whereas the backgrounds are all the opposite of smooth -- they are almost gritty -- to say nothing about the obvious differences in brightness and saturation.
What aspects do you think are similar?
Tom M
to me the whole image has a painted kinda feel where the background and the subject look like a hi res cartoon
with the focus and light being on the cars
this is how i feel they are similar
maybe the others are right about them being shot in the day and then composited into the background
even in that case the cars have been post processed
and then again how do we achieve the look of the background
After reading the OP's first post again, I guess he would like to achieve a look like this?
View attachment 50016
click to enlarge.
thanks for the effort the background defintly has the feel of the blue lexus image
but the car sticks out sorely im afraid
they are blended so nicely in the examples in my first post
I would start in ACR....and I suspect these are HDR images....oversharpening and extra contrast thru Topaz will help I do like where Chris is going..
i had a thought that these could be HDR images but im just a novice and i cant be sure
sharpening the image is causing a grainy effect on the image while the examples are very smooth
on the whole the post processed images are amazing
it would be interesting to learn how to achieve this look