Need help with this image: Model with Muscle Car

hey folks!

I am new to muscle car shoots. I got to know a model via shooting for an ad campaign and she requested that I do a shoot with her and a muscle car. That is something that interested me but had never even attempted before. She had the contacts, the car owner and the owner of a garage who would let us shoot there, so said yes, would like to do the shoot.

Attached is the image. She looks great, and for what I know the car looks great as well EXCEPT for the rear chrome bumper. It looks terrible but I do not know how to repair chrome. I can do basic to advanced hobbyist Photoshop work, but don't possess the skills of a pro user.

Can anybody help me?????

I would love to learn how to do this myself, so anybody willing to help would be greatly appreciated!

any C&C on the image itself is also welcomed, always looking to learn, thanks in advance!!

Gosh, that's tough. You'd need some serious artistic skillz there, I'd say. It would more or less need to be created anew.

thanks Damien,

I have been thinking of trying "replace color" or "match color" with narrow threshold to select just small pieces of the ugly chrome and replace with color/sat/luminance from a section of good chrome, then repeating the process with a different looking part of good chrome until I had some randomness and good chrome all over.

also considered looking for free stock photo with large section of hi-rez chrome, introducing it into the image as new layer, then masking and painting to reveal the nice chrome layer through the masked part of the original image.

do you think either would work?

I have seen a plug-in, must have been a year or two ago, that applied chrome look to text and objects. can't remember where I saw it though. That would be useful.

I don't envy you that job - personally I'm struggling to see how you can make a realistic looking bumper from scratch.

General comment on the pic thought are that it looks underexposed to me. The front of the car has no pop and just blends into the dark background and the tyres have no detail - the same goes for the models boots and top.

In short, lots more light needed IMHO.

I think the loss of detail in her clothes is worse than the bumper.

I dig the grime on the bumper, its the degrading light beyond the rear fender that's getting me. Lost a lot of detail there. Not sure if you can save it in lightroom or not.

thanks Nightstalker!

yea, I guess I lost sight of the forest for the trees--focused so much on the car that lost sight of the whole scene. Was definitely too dark. Corrected the white and black points, added +0.77 exp

The idea of using "replace color" adjustment on the bumper selection alone is working somewhat. Not sure how realistic it looks to you folks, but it definitely looks better. I just selected different colors in the original bumper and replaced it with much darker or much lighter version of itself.

What do you think? Any progress? I don't want to tilt at windmills on this one--if this isn't progress then I am just going to move on. If it is some progress, I will put it in the "play" folder to learn from.

Thanks for all the help

Her skin looked better in the first one & there's still little (no) detail in the black outfit, & the bright rear of the car pulls my eye away from her. Shooting two subjects in one shot is about 4 times more difficult than just one is. Personally, I'd crop off the right half of the shot & concentrate in making her look better.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #15872434
Her skin looked better in the first one & there's still little (no) detail in the black outfit, & the bright rear of the car pulls my eye away from her. Shooting two subjects in one shot is about 4 times more difficult than just one is. Personally, I'd crop off the right half of the shot & concentrate in making her look better.

thanks Frank!
you are the expert on this, so going to do as you suggested
also going to move on from this image and on to better ones-have better ones in retrospect to spend my time on.

btw, it was a last minute idea to shoot, so with the limited time I had, the first place I went to learn about car photography was your posts and links--they were a big help!
thanks

Frank, if ok with you, could you close/lock this thread?

Why? We usually don't lock "finished" threads in the Share areas. They usually get to page 2 & lower fast enough?