You will learn how to quicky tune a car of your choice. This tutorial is specially designed for tuning companies. We will show you some good techniques for painting and styling.

Step 1

Start with opening your favorite car image, choose whatever car you like and would like to tune it with Photoshop. We will choose an old russian national car Lada model 2111. Our main goal is to change the car color, tint the windows, add some cool stylish rims and some simple spoilers.
So, let’s begin, here is the image we choose:
Click on this image to open full resolution file

Step 2

So, you have probably opened up your image in photohsop. First thing we will do, is to change the color of car. To do that you must make a clipping path around a car and cutout everything you want to paint or change color. So, simply choose PEN TOOL from tools palette (). You must now draw an outline around your car’s body. For reference in usign pen tool you can read this tutorial.

When you make an outline of your car, start then drawing outlines of inside objects like windows, door handles or such stuff, that you don’t want to change color on… So we have just made outline of our car and it look like this:

Now continue adding these paths around objects on car that your DON’T want to paint later… like this:

Step 3

Now look at your layers palette, noice that there is Paths pallete near the right side, click on it to reveal it. Select that Work Path there. Now press Ctrl+Shift+N and press Enter to create a new layer. Then, hold Ctrl and left-click on that WorkPath to make a selection. Press D on keyboard to reset colors, choose Paint Bucket Tool and click into the selection somewhere to fill that black color in. (If you wish to colorize your car into some other color than black then choose your foreground color before using Paint Bucket Tool).

Step 4

Now change blending mode of that new layer (Layer 1) to “Color” like on this image:

Now hold CTRL again and while holding it left-click on Layer 1 to make a selection of that layer.
Next thing you will do is to select Backgournd layer and add new adjustment layer. To add new adjustment layer click on this icon: and choose Levels. Make the settings on Levels window like on this next image:

Click OK and your car is now colored to your favorite color.

You will now notice how your original image is not destroyed with this levels effect so you can easily toggle off visibility of all other layers to see your original image.

Step 5

We will proceed now with tinting the windows on car. Click on Paths, select WorkPath. Choose Path Selection Tool () and select the windows that you want to tint or colorize. To select more than one window hold SHIFT and leftclick on windows you like to tint.
Now on the bottom of Paths palette click on icon: “Load path as a selection”. (). Deselect the WorkPath (just leftclick on empty gray area of the paths pallete).
Click back on Layers palette select Background layer and press CTRL+C and then press CTRL+V to copy&paste windows to new layer. Now move that layer on top of the “Levels 1” layer like this:

Double click on that Layer 2 (your copied windows there) to open Layer Style window. Check there Gradient Overlay. Make the settings for Gradient Overlay like on this next image:

Click OK and you have just tinted the windows.

Our car now look like this:

Step 6

Notice now how that front driver’s window has too much blue color on it. It’s time to correct that now. If you did exactly as I said before, and you have outlined all the windows this should be a simple task. All you have to do is to go to Layers palette, then switch to Paths palette. From there select the Work Path, and use Path Selection Tool from tools palette () and select only front window outline.


Selection must look like on this image above.

Now as you selected front window in Paths palette click on “Load Path as a selection” button ().
Then, head back to Layers palette select highest layer in palette (because you will create a new adjustment layer now) and create a new adjustment layer by clicking on this button: and choose Hue/Saturation… Enter the options in window like on next image:

Click ok and you have just tinted the front window, as it should be for real.

Step 7

Now it’s time for change the tires and new rims. We have found this image on Google image search very fast, just use some popular rims manufacturer name as a keyword for search (like dotz, allessio, rcdesign, aez, dezent…)

Now you must cutout this image, transfer it on your car, and rotate, resize and move it to fit on your car.
Let’s start with cutting out this image. Open it up in photoshop, and using the Elliptical Marquee Tool cutout the rim. You only need the front side, now cutout with magic wand tool inner holes in rim. You will get something like this when you are finished with selection:

Now click on -> Select -> Feather -> Enter amount of 3 pixels.
Using the Move Tool () click on the selection – hold and drag the rim on your other document where you car is (drag’n’drop).

Press CTRL+T and resize and rotate your rim to fit on the tyres. Here it is fitted on tyre:

Now you must paint black color under the rim, to make it look a bit more realistic.

Make your Foreground color Black, using a Brush Tool () sized around 20px smooth, create a new layer on top of the Background layer, and paint on that layer on position under the rim, if you pain too much, just use eraser tool () to delete what is not needed.
After that set the blending mode of that layer to Multiply like this:

And it now looks like this:

Repeat the same procedure on back wheels.

For the wheel on the other side of vehicle you can use just rim, and with erase tool delete unneeded parts and just set it’s blending mode to Luminosity and Opacity: 23%.

Result

Here it is, before and after image: