Car PP - thoughts?

Here's my first go at PP. I'm just starting to learn how to use CS4 and this is my first attempt. I used some layer masks, played with the levels a bit, and added in the sky. Any thoughts on how I could improve? C&C appreciated. Thanks!

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Great car but the background kills the shot IMO (parking lot, tree...). Can you switch it to something else?

Aside from the background that Svetlana mentioned, it's not a bad shot. I think you could go quite a bit further with the post processing, but I tend to be pretty heavy handed when it comes to cars:

Thanks for the comments!

The shot was taken at an outdoor car show so I didn't really have a choice where I wanted the car. As far as post processing goes, I don't know the techniques yet, but I'm learning and experimenting.

Griptape -
What did you do to get the ground to look as it does? Or if you don't mind, could you share what you did in your go at the PP?

EDIT-Just to put things into perspective, here's the original shot. Have at it if you'd like.

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richardwu wrote in post #9086704
Griptape -
What did you do to get the ground to look as it does? Or if you don't mind, could you share what you did in your go at the PP?

The ground looks as it does from my first step; Duplicate the background layer, convert to black and white to my liking, and change the layer to "multiply" (which will change the layer back to color, but give you a semi-negative on some parts of the image, and give an overall much darker look). Then, using a layer mask, I masked out the car to my liking. Then I flattened the layers, and used a small dose of a plug-in called "Topaz Adjust", which can bring out a lot of detail (generally too much, so I lowered the opacity on that layer to around 40%), followed by noise reduction (Nik Dfine specifically, as Topaz Adjust can add a lot of unwanted noise). Then a healthy amount of dodge and burn, focused mainly on the car. Then I repeated my first step again (B&W, set layer to Multiply), but this time I used the layer mask to reveal the entire previous layer, and just used the white paint brush for a little bit of vignette on the corners.

I'm not at home, so this was done on my laptop. I didn't touch the exposure of the car except I brightened the passenger side A-post for better separation. Cropped to remove distractions & cloned the bushes on the new skyline. Cloned the side window (crappy job), & darkened the background.

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Griptape -
I appreciate the detailed walkthrough. I'll have to try out some of those techniques sometime.

Frank -
The cloned window looks much better than the original. I should've tried that. I don't know if I like the tighter crop, but I guess there's not much to do with the original background I had. Thanks for the input!

Just my impression. You could clone the markings and gutter out.
Cloned window, gutter, parking bays, crop, slight sharpen and curves adjust.

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The window and the ground look a lot cleaner. I like it.

Clone the windows darker like it's tinted though eh

I think your edit was great... maybe green up the tree.. bump up saturation. I think it's great. nice work on the sky too.

AmandaMarie wrote in post #9118476
Clone the windows darker like it's tinted though eh

But not too much - wouldn't want it to not be street legal If you do, hit the headlights a little too - what the heck, huh?

Took some time to work on the window today. I think it turned out OK. I wasn't really sure how to get the tinted look, so I just used an adjustment layer and inverted the color. What do you guys think?

And to all who have commented so far, I really appreciate the feedback!

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Lumin's rendering looks great!