Photoshop Tutorial, Part Two

[Harry P.]

Now I'll add the thin white highlight where the fender and body meet. I have my base layer (the photo) turned "on" here, so I can see it. On a new, separate layer, I draw an ellipse with the Elliptical Marquee tool that gives me the approximate shape of the highlight I want to create, and using the Paint Bucket (circled in red), I'll "dump" white into the selected elliptical area:

Now I'll move the ellipse (the "active" area) slightly down...leaving the white ellipse of color in place, only moving the "live area" within the ellipse...

Then by hitting the "Delete" key on my keyboard I remove the unwanted area of white. Remember, the area within the selected area (the ellipse) is the "live" area... the area affected by hitting the "Delete" key:

Now I'll draw a new ellipse...

And hit the "Delete" key again to remove the unwanted white area on the right of my new shape:

You can see that my newly created white shape isn't exactly right... it doesn't quite match the shape in my reference photo, but that's an easy fix. I can change the shape of it by going to the dropdown menus and selecting Edit>Transform>Distort:

Selecting the "Distort" function gives me a "bounding box" around the shape I want to distort (circled in red). By pulling on the corners of the bounding box I can reshape my selected piece, as if it was made of rubber. I can stretch and compress it any way I want. I'll distort it to match the shape on the reference photo:

And here is the finished highlight, seen with the other highlight areas and green body that I've created so far. The base layer (the photo) is still turned "om" in this screen shot, that's why you can see the sky part of the photo (the photo layer is below all the other layers):

The door line is created like the highlight shape I just created, but instead of using the elliptical marquee to define the shape, I'll use the Lasso tool (because the shape I need is an irregular shape, not just a smooth curve. Again, using my photo as a reference, I draw the shape of the door seam on a new, separate layer, use the bucket to dump some very dark green into the shape I just drew, and then move the selected "live area" defined by my Lasso tool slightly to the left, leaving the dark green shape in place:

Then I'll hit "Delete" to remove the unwanted area of color to get my door line. What you're seeing in this last shot is only two layers... the photo reference layer turned "on" and my new door seam layer turned "on"... the other layers (the green body and the other highlights I've created so far) are turned "off" in this shot:

More to come...