2011 Ferrari 458 Italia at a car show in St. Petersburg Florida
- Learn this digital photograph editing technique from Jason in a 1-on-1 lesson, reserve today!
Car shows are great places to see a large number of awesome cars in a small space. However, that small space and numerous other car fans walking around create a nearly impossible situation for photographing the cars in full. Detail shots are usually what I focus on, but still I want to have at least a few full car shots as well. Some of you may know that the Ferrari 458 Italia is my current favorite car in the world. At a recent St. Petersburg, Florida car show I had a chance to talk with the owners of the above 458 Italia who were very nice people. I photographed their Ferrari at length.
I could not get a shot like I wanted to while there due to other cars being parked so close to the 458 Italia and of course because of many other people coming to peek at Ferrari's latest mid-engine super car. So I had to settle for the best angle I could get taking into account the sun's position and just the space I had to shoot in. Photoshop CS5 helped with the rest.
Too clone out things from complex surroundings, quick select them then clone stamp in safetyIn the above screen shot you can see how I first used the Quick Select Tool (W) to put a protective fence around the objects I wanted to remove (silver car, people, etc). I do this because the Clone Stamp Tool (S) is very temperamental and very hard to use along a distinct edge like the front fender of the red Ferrari and the silver Ferrari. Basically, containing the unwanted object in a quick select field allows me to not worry about coloring outside the lines, so to speak. You can see I selected some grass from the foreground and already started stamping it onto the silver Ferrari. The sharp edge of the red Ferrari fender will remain perfectly intact.
Likewise for the people above the red Ferrari. I will clone some of the trees and stamp them on top of the people to complete the illusion that the Ferrari 458 Italia is alone in a field. To close the quick select areas hit CMD-M (on a Mac).
Using this quick select and cloning method will allow you to cleanly and easily remove objects from complex surroundings.