My first "chop" - a 1958 Volvo Duet

[jarborra]

Inspired by all the great chops I saw here, I decided to make my own...and scare my dad in the process. You see, he has this 1958 Volvo Duett that was his first car and that he's nurtured for over 35 years. More money and time goes into that car than he wants my mom to know. I made this chop today and emailed him the final picture saying I'd been in touch with his mechanics and bodyshop guys and arranged for a surprise for him!



Anyway, here is the original:


And here is my take at creating...I don't know what:


What do you think? My dad nearly had a heart attack (poor guy)!

[Top Gear Girl]

Wow, thats some good photoshopping, it's like a real photo (I mean that this time)

[Raheel]

nice chop overall. the rims are cool and the flames too.

I hope your dad did not take it too seriously. nice trick dude

[Jostyrostelli]

The car still sucks lol

I think the overall chop is good.

But I think you want some feedback for the next chop, here goes:

You did a good job on converting from normal to truck (rear).
The wheels are in good perspective.
Nice sunvisor, couldn't tell if it was chopped.

But, as you might know, the selectionlines are not as nice as they should be on a perfect chop, you can see it around the indicatorlights, and the mirror.

I wouldn't have chosen that color, dunno how much experience you have with chopping, but try fiddling with brightness and colorsettings when you select.
Gives some pretty interesting results.

And IMO the flairs should leave Because they will never look good, it's not realistic, but in this case it's not that bad.

[jarborra]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Converting from normal to truck was actually the easiest part, just the old trusty clone stamp. The sunvisor was chopped. I agree on the selectionlines. When I try to click lots of little points with the polygon lasso tool, it tends to think I want it to "close" the selection area. I will fiddle with brightness and colors more next time. I did have a fair poke around but I also wanted an obscene color that would upset my dad!

[Viper007Bond]

Nice!

Some feedback though:

- There's a bit of ghosting where the back of the cab used to be
- The flames look a bit odd
- The wheels also look a bit off

[fleshbox]

^^ what I was gonna say. The rims are too brightly lit to look realistic. I would notice that right off the bat, but in comparison to the original it REALLY stands out.

IMO the visor looks chopped, the lines and shading are must less crisp than the rest of the image, and the colors and highlighting don't match that of the car itself. and the flairs are not accurate to reality. Looking at the lights head on would produce the effect you have with the halos concentric tot he lights, but from an angle there would be the classic "trail" effect of the flairs. Though I do agree with Jostyrostelli about flairs just never look real... for me flairs and rims are dead giveaways to a chop because for some reason it seems to be quite dificult to render these accurately and realistically.


Other than that I think it is a quality chop, the cloning was quite good, heck I hadn't even noticed that area (imo this is a sign of a good job).


if this is your first chop then you did far better than I did my first time... though I haven't done a chop in quite a while.

[Raheel]

whoa dudes, most of the stuff you guys talked about up there is new to me. I think i need to visit more tuts now.

[jarborra]

Let me know which tuts you find useful...I've read through all the PhotoshopJunkie ones and although they were very good I'm hungry for more!

Thanks for the feedback guys. What's the best way to reduce the brightness of the rims? I tried playing around with the channel mixer but didn't really have any success. Also, how can you light up the headlights without getting those telltale flairs. I agree they suck. Plus there was a huge white flair all over the back that I had to compensate for.

[fblacka]

Try to use the path tool instead of the lasso to make some nice curved selections ... the rear wheel is off ... just a tip: in most cases the further ellipse is thinner than the one closer ... just dont forget this and ull get there ... or just reduce the opacity of the new rim so u can see exactly where to place it on the orig one ... when done just set back the new rims opacity to 100% amd thats it ...

[fleshbox]

For darkening rims you can do something like burn it a bit, or even use a black color overlay and mess with the transparency and tweak the settings and what not. Heck I have even sampled a color from the body and then brushed over the rims on a new layer and then lower the opacity so as I am darkening it looks more like it is reflecting the car color...

[jarborra]

Good tips, thanks guys!