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Photoshop Pro: Bring A Static Car To Life

In this tutorial, you’ll be shown how to manipulate a static car to become one that looks like it is realistically speeding. First of all, we will need to understand the concept of lighting and reflection that will take place when a car is moving swiftly on the road at night. This tutorial focuses on how to apply the combination of layer mask and blending mode functions. The final outcome should be of a painted sports car driving rapidly at night.

Before & After:


They need to be clear of the style they wish to apply to their illustration, which includes the idea, perspective and characteristic. It is crucial to improve one’s manipulation skills and art sense if they ever wish to produce a successful piece of work.

To begin with, choose two similar perspective images as an element of illustration. I have chosen a sports car and a night scene image for this tutorial.


Sports Car- Image ID: 925338 © gary718 123RF.com Street – Image ID: 3050203 © joseasreyes 123RF.com

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In the next step, merge (select two layers in Layers Window and press Ctrl + E) this two layers together, name it “glowing edge copy” and change the Opacity to 36%. Duplicate another “Background” layer, move this to the top and set Opacity to 80% to lighten the background.

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We have finally created an illustration of a sports car moving rapidly and swiftly on the road at night. Apart from that, we can further enhance the section highlighted in blue to get better results. I would suggest you repaint some of the darker areas and bring out the highlight points in the whole illustration. You can also adjust the contrast and brightness of the image to your own liking and add some striking lines to express the dramatic speeding effect. That’s all I would like to share with everyone.

Final Image:


Tips: 1.Always duplicate and keep a layer of work you have created. If there are any layers that we are not satisfied with, you’ll be glad that there are still room for re-modification without causing too much problem nor consuming too much time.

2.We can always change the blending mode or opacity in later stage to improve the effect and to enhance the material of the object. Feel free to set your own level of setting because it should all depend on the different situations and styles you have in mind.

If you liked our tutorial, feel free to share it with your friends or even bookmark it!

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