Photoshop expert advice, please

[Phimosis]

Hi. I have Photoshop CS3 but don't know how to use it like a pro.

When I try things like changing the color of wheels, I can never get it to threshhold the wheel and end up changing the color of fender and stuff too. What's your tick with this?

When I see Photoshopped wheels, sometimes they are shiny like they have a reflection map from a ray tracing program. how do you achieve this effect?

Sometimes I see different wheels put in a car , but the shot will be like 1/4 front or something and chopping the wheels from any other angle will give you oval shapped wheels that don't match the shape of the one's your'e replacing. So how do you stick aftermarket wheels under your car?

I see people take a picture and "lower" the car. I understand you cut and paste the wheel higher up in the fender well, but then what do you with the the background to make it look natural, instead of white cutout spots?

Lastly, if you have other cool techniques that you use all the time that I just would never ask about because I don't know enough about photoshop, please post them!

Thanks in adance,

-Phim

[k20z3]

There are two different ways.

Always duplicate your layers CTRL+J when your working with your color so you can delete and try again.

To change the wheel get the Rectangle Marque tool I believe CTRL M and stretch it to the size of your wheels you need to hold CTRL while dragging over the circumference of first wheel, then proceed to hold ctrl and go over the next wheel, there are more than these few ways to do it...

1.) while the wheels are selected make a new layer that is set to soft light, and paint over them with about 1%-5% hardness with your brush this should work.

2.) go into its the brush below the brush its like color replcatment too, and it knows where to go change the color that way as well.

3.) too complicated to explain....

YOU NEED for chopping wheels the SAME angle or pretty damn close!!!! then you need to stretch and mold the wheel until appropriate.

Umm, as far as lowering you can always use the patch tool to get under the wheel when you "raise it up" or other tools .. . just choose away!

[Phimosis]

Thanks! That gives me some useful ideas, especially for coloring car and wheels so it doesn't look fake. :-)