Automotive Photography How To: Make An Engine Composite Picture

Anyone that reads car magazines have no doubt seen the pictures of cars with the invisible bonnet well I have done a few in the past and thought I would do a outline on how I create the pictures with the most basic of photography equipment.

• What you will need:

• 1 X Camera
• 1 X Tripod
• 1 X Car
• 1 X Copy of Photoshop or photo editing package

• Park car in front in the location you plan to shoot, Then Place tripod and camera in front of the car and take a picture.

• Now leaving the tripod and camera in exactly the same place quickly run over to the car and open the bonnet then take another picture.

• Now take both the pictures back home and open up in Photoshop.
• Make any edits you require to both the images to make the pictures pop i.e play with levels, contrast, colour, brightness etc.

• Select the image with bonnet open and ‘copy’ the image (Ctl & c on windows cmd & c on mac) and insert into a new page we shall name this page composite for tutorial reasons.
•  Then go to the picture with the car with its bonnet closed and copy the image again as before now place this image over the new document labelled ‘composite’.
•  Now select the eraser tool and set the feather to a hardness of 0%  and then start erasing the bonnet away to show the engine on the layer below. Once you have done flatten the image and save and there you have it.

I don’t claim to be a expert at Photoshop and other people have their ways of doing thing but just thought I would give you and insight into my way of editing the image should people know a better way of doing this as I’m always keen to learn feel free to email me.