Asphalt...how to fix it?

I'm sure that you guys are the right ones to ask... A recent family that I shot portraits for also asked me to take some shots of the car that their Dad had built... it's a really nice ride. I got several shots from direclty above the car (hanging off a fire escape in an alley) and the car itself looks great, but the asphalt is all cracked up and faded... It's hard to see the damaged surface in this pic, but I don't have any of the others with me at work.. Anyone have pointers on replacing it with a nice blacktop surface?

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Copy good areas and paste them over the bad areas. If the lighting and color is uniform the asphalt will match pretty good, and you'll just need to pick the right spots to copy. The good thing about asphalt is that you can use a feather of about 2 and the area you copy will almost always match the area you paste over. this technique is also good for removing parking lot stripes and other nuisances.

katodog wrote in post #11314001
Copy good areas and paste them over the bad areas. If the lighting and color is uniform the asphalt will match pretty good, and you'll just need to pick the right spots to copy. The good thing about asphalt is that you can use a feather of about 2 and the area you copy will almost always match the area you paste over. this technique is also good for removing parking lot stripes and other nuisances.

If you do it this way then mask out the car and building first.

Better to mask out as above then curve or filter to get you 90% there with only a bit of healing brush for the real bad areas.

A quick example, with a little time you can get things to be however you want them to be...

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great suggestions guys... thanks for the assist!

I'd also like to add that I think cracked and gritty cement looks awesome in car photos and it should be accentuated instead of obscured. With the bucket rod photo above, I'd leave the cracks and only clone the yellow paint.

cedew wrote in post #11318361
I'd also like to add that I think cracked and gritty cement looks awesome in car photos and it should be accentuated instead of obscured. With the bucket rod photo above, I'd leave the cracks and only clone the yellow paint.

Surprisingly I sometimes think the same thing, but normally only for solo shoots. Car shows kinda suck in that no matter what you do there's always something in the way, something in the background, something reflected in the car, etc.. I doubt even the guys who invented Photoshop could get rid of everything and maintain the look of the car. Most car show shots I just process for the car, maybe remove a light pole or something, otherwise they stay as-shot.

But, that particular shot I left as-shot, I only removed the cracks in this one to show what could be done. I won't take them out of the original shot.

Let's see the other shots! Great car and shot...