Unless we are an automotive photographer, getting access to fancy cars at the environments in which we’d like to photograph them can be a tricky proposition. But what can we do with those images of cars we get on the street or at shows? In this video tutorial from Tutvid, photographer Nathaniel Dodson shows us how we can cut out those cars and composite them realistically into other scenes to give us the images we want.
Nathaniel takes us through the whole process from start to finish, beginning with how to pick the right image of the car, along with the right background to match perspective. This can be a difficult task, as landscapes are often shot with lenses much wider than those we may use for cars.
It may not look so flawless initially, but after resizing and tweaking things just slightly using the transform and perspective tools in Photoshop on both the car and background layers, they match each other much more closely. Figuring out perspective for compositing, can often be challenging, but the basic principles of two point perspective are extremely useful for this compositing these types of images.
After matching the position and perspective, adding more realistic shadows, and colour toning the whole scene, we get a much more believable result.
How do you deal with perspective in your composites? Do you expand out and draw perspective lines so horizons match up? Or do you do it all by eye? Let us know in the comments.
