- 545
- United States
- borswaki
This is my first guide relating to photoshop so, take it easy on me. 👍
Since so many people have been asking me on how I process my photos I have finally decided to make an easy walkthrough/guide on having a nice, realistic shots. Here it goes..
The original photo itself
- 1st thing first, I would suggest having a picture that is equally balanced, nothing too bright and nothing too dark, so it's easier to edit.
Ex: (This is an original photo, not edited at all)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Notice how the lighting is almost perfect? What you want to start out with is a dark photo, because it's easier for me to just correct the lighting to how I want it to be.
- 2nd is that you want a track with great lighting over all. Also a lot of shadows where it gives perfect reflection and shadow type wise
Maps I recommend:
-Nurburgring - It's a good track to take photos on, especially if you manually set the time during 6-8 A.M It gives the photos great quality. It also gives many different types of lighting, because of all the trees.
- High speed ring, this track is perfect too, the lighting isn't too bright. It's perfect.
-Mostly all the tracks in the city section, London, Tokyo, Rome, etc.
-Or, you can even create your own track with the warm specific lighting, 6-8 A.M or 5-7 P.M
I choose the type of daylight time because of it's color and the quality it gives me.
Ex:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
- Also, if you think the photo is way too bright, always use the exposure and set it to negative, it's almost always better to have a darker picture as your original because you can fix it later on while editing it.
More on how to use/take advantage of GT5 Photography use, gtsomethings Make the most of the GT5 Camera v2.0
The editing
(You'll need Photoshop for this)
Fixing the shadows and lighting
In this guide I will show you how to fix the lighting on your GT5 photos, our example will be this photo:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Now you might be wondering why I chose this, I chose it because it has 2 things we are looking for, darkness and lightness. This photo has both.
The tool I would always use first is the curve tool:
This is a very very useful tool when it comes to fixing your shadows and lighting.
Don't know how to use it?
Here's a picture of it with 2 different colors separated by a red line.
The blue part of the photo means, it is changing the lighting for the top half of the photo, pulling it down makes it darker, pulling it up makes it brighter. You can grab any part of the line, but be sure to grab the line going diagonal.
The green part is the same but it is for the lower half of the photo, it does the same thing as the blue part of the photo.
Using the curves tool on your GT5 photo
Now, here is an example of me using it:
(Left part of the photo is the edited part while the right part is the original)
I grabbed the bottom part of the curve tool, the Output: 96 Input: 43
See how it made it brighter? And gave the dark part a better view of it?
It's the other way around when you pull the line to the lower part.
Now that you have the idea on how to use it, let's go on, on fixing the example photo.
Note: You see how the first curve layer is only going higher? While the 2nd curve layer is a wiggly line for low and high?
That's because the first curve is for giving it that brighter look, then the 2nd curve is giving the more darker shadows and balancing it out by raising the line higher for the top part of the tool.
The next thing I added is gradient map:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map
After that I use the black through white, and change the layer setting to Soft Light, and lower the opacity somewhere >50.
That should fix the lighting problem, the easy way.
Color correction
Color correction is also an essential part on having a realistic photo, because sometimes transporting GT5 pics from PS3 to PC washes out the color and that has got to be fixed.
This section will be about how to fix the colors depending on how rich you want the colors to be.
The example I will use today is this photo:
I chose it because it has many colors on it, and the picture is a great example for color correction.
Here's the tool we will be using:
Saturation tool? We're not using the "Master" tool but we're using all the separate colors, like the colors listed on the drop down menu, that way we can control each color the way we want them to be saturated instead of all of them saturated at once.
Just like in the picture, it's already saturated color by color. Instead of using "Master" I used them separated because, you don't really want the blue to get saturated by that much, your photo will look like crap, unless your car is blue, but don't try to saturate blue that much.
This game is dependent on Red and Green, so that's what you mainly want to saturate, because of the track.
Sharpening and Grain
Coming soon..
Adding it all together
Coming soon..
Since so many people have been asking me on how I process my photos I have finally decided to make an easy walkthrough/guide on having a nice, realistic shots. Here it goes..
The original photo itself
- 1st thing first, I would suggest having a picture that is equally balanced, nothing too bright and nothing too dark, so it's easier to edit.
Ex: (This is an original photo, not edited at all)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Notice how the lighting is almost perfect? What you want to start out with is a dark photo, because it's easier for me to just correct the lighting to how I want it to be.
- 2nd is that you want a track with great lighting over all. Also a lot of shadows where it gives perfect reflection and shadow type wise
Maps I recommend:
-Nurburgring - It's a good track to take photos on, especially if you manually set the time during 6-8 A.M It gives the photos great quality. It also gives many different types of lighting, because of all the trees.
- High speed ring, this track is perfect too, the lighting isn't too bright. It's perfect.
-Mostly all the tracks in the city section, London, Tokyo, Rome, etc.
-Or, you can even create your own track with the warm specific lighting, 6-8 A.M or 5-7 P.M
I choose the type of daylight time because of it's color and the quality it gives me.
Ex:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
- Also, if you think the photo is way too bright, always use the exposure and set it to negative, it's almost always better to have a darker picture as your original because you can fix it later on while editing it.
More on how to use/take advantage of GT5 Photography use, gtsomethings Make the most of the GT5 Camera v2.0
The editing
(You'll need Photoshop for this)
Fixing the shadows and lighting
In this guide I will show you how to fix the lighting on your GT5 photos, our example will be this photo:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Now you might be wondering why I chose this, I chose it because it has 2 things we are looking for, darkness and lightness. This photo has both.
The tool I would always use first is the curve tool:
This is a very very useful tool when it comes to fixing your shadows and lighting.
Don't know how to use it?
Here's a picture of it with 2 different colors separated by a red line.
The blue part of the photo means, it is changing the lighting for the top half of the photo, pulling it down makes it darker, pulling it up makes it brighter. You can grab any part of the line, but be sure to grab the line going diagonal.
The green part is the same but it is for the lower half of the photo, it does the same thing as the blue part of the photo.
Using the curves tool on your GT5 photo
Now, here is an example of me using it:
(Left part of the photo is the edited part while the right part is the original)
I grabbed the bottom part of the curve tool, the Output: 96 Input: 43
See how it made it brighter? And gave the dark part a better view of it?
It's the other way around when you pull the line to the lower part.
Now that you have the idea on how to use it, let's go on, on fixing the example photo.
Note: You see how the first curve layer is only going higher? While the 2nd curve layer is a wiggly line for low and high?
That's because the first curve is for giving it that brighter look, then the 2nd curve is giving the more darker shadows and balancing it out by raising the line higher for the top part of the tool.
The next thing I added is gradient map:
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map
After that I use the black through white, and change the layer setting to Soft Light, and lower the opacity somewhere >50.
That should fix the lighting problem, the easy way.
Color correction
Color correction is also an essential part on having a realistic photo, because sometimes transporting GT5 pics from PS3 to PC washes out the color and that has got to be fixed.
This section will be about how to fix the colors depending on how rich you want the colors to be.
The example I will use today is this photo:
I chose it because it has many colors on it, and the picture is a great example for color correction.
Here's the tool we will be using:
Saturation tool? We're not using the "Master" tool but we're using all the separate colors, like the colors listed on the drop down menu, that way we can control each color the way we want them to be saturated instead of all of them saturated at once.
Just like in the picture, it's already saturated color by color. Instead of using "Master" I used them separated because, you don't really want the blue to get saturated by that much, your photo will look like crap, unless your car is blue, but don't try to saturate blue that much.
This game is dependent on Red and Green, so that's what you mainly want to saturate, because of the track.
Sharpening and Grain
Coming soon..
Adding it all together
Coming soon..
Last edited:
I saw your photos in the realistic photothread and they look amazing 👍
