Part II: How to Add Flaming Decals to a Modern Car Design
This tutorial will explain the steps needed to turn this boring Prius into an awesome street racer. This tutorial is aimed at intermediate users of Photoshop, those who know most of its basic tools and how to use them. This is Part II of a two-part series. Get situated comfortably in your chair, as we pick this series up from where we left off.
Step 24
From this point on, I will mostly be using techniques that I have already explained. I’m not going to go into as much detail in Part II. When using new techniques, I will continue to give a detailed explanation, though.
Draw a path around all the glass on the windows. Make a selection of the path and feather it 0.5px. Make a solid color adjustment layer in the “windows” group and fill it with a very dark gray. Call it “tint.” Assign the path as a vector mask on the color fill and turn off the vector mask. Make a noise layer like we did before and apply it as a clipping mask on the “tint” layer.
Step 25
Make a heavily feathered selection around the top of the windows. Make a Curves adjustment layer that lightens the top part so you get a nice fade at the top of the windows.
Step 26
Make a heavily feathered circular selection around the center of the windows. Invert the selection and make another Curves adjustment layer that lightens the outer parts of the windows. Both of these curves layers should be a clipping mask to the “tint” layer.
Step 27
Turn the “tint” layer’s Opacity down to 90%. Draw a path along the border of the two triangle windows. Then load the selection of the path. Make a new Curves adjustment layer just above the other two and lighten the selection a bit.
Step 28
Here is what my layer palette and image looks like so far.
Step 29
Turn off the “tint” layer for now. Now we have to retouch out the window support that we don’t need anymore. I did it by drawing a path around each part I needed to retouch out. Then I painted in the color that I needed on a new layer.
Step 30
After that I fixed the borders by duplicating parts of the surrounding border from the “base” layer and transforming them to fit.
Step 31
Finally, I created a “seat” from scratch and filled it with a dark gray that matched the surrounding colors. Then I put it just below the “tint” layer.
Step 32
Draw a path that will represent the outline of the door.
Step 33
Create a blank layer at the top of the “paint” section and call it “door.” Set a dark gray as your foreground color. Grab the Brush(B) and make the Diameter 3 and the Hardness 50. Now with the “door” layer selected, right-click on the path and choose Stroke Path. Make sure that the source is Brush and that Simulate Pressure is off. Now apply the Bevel/Emboss layer style to the door layer.
Step 34
Go back to the “base” layer and draw a path around the handle. Feather it 0.5px and hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate it. Bring the duplicate to the top of the “paint” section, then place it where you like it. Mine overlaps the highlight a little so I am going to disrupt the highlight by drawing a path and and filling that part of the path with black like below.
Step 35
Isolate the “base” layer by holding Option/Alt and clicking on the “eye” icon next to it. Grab a selection of the door indentation and duplicate it to a new layer. Call it “side bar.” Option/Alt-click on the eye again to turn off isolation.
Step 36
Move the layer so it sits just below the “noise” layer that is applied to the “grad” layer in the Layers Palette. Stretch the “side bar” layer so that it extends the length of the door. Blur the layer a little to get rid of the stretched noise.
Step 37
Now draw a path around it that resembles the original shape. Use the path to create a mask for the “side bar” layer.
Step 38
Isolate the “base” layer once again. Now in the channels palette, drag the red channel down to the New Channel button to duplicate it. Now what we are going to do is isolate that highlight that sits just below the door. On the new channel you made put a harsh curve that makes everything surrounding the highlight black.
Step 39
Draw a marquee around the highlight. Invert the selection. Remove any details that aren’t the highlight.
Step 40
Load the selection of your channel. At the top of the “paint” section, make a Solid Color adjustment layer and fill it with white. Now transform the layer until it fits the door. Set the layer to Overlay.
Make a path along the bottom of the car where it should be black. Load the selection and feather it 1px. Fill the “grad” layer mask black in that area to remove the paint.
Step 41
Finally, make a selection along the bottom. Feather it about 25px. Then make a Curves adjustment layer just above the “grad” layer. Then darken it until it almost becomes black.
Step 42
Go to File>Place and select the flames.ai file. Place the flames at the top of the “paint” section and scale them how you see fit.
Step 43
Load the transparency of the “flames” layer by holding Cmd/Ctrl and clicking on its icon in the layer palette. Make a Curves adjustment layer that looks like the image below.
Step 44
Now delete the old placed layer. Then just to even out the color of the paint, make a new solid color adjustment layer at the top of the “paint” section. Make the fill a very light blue. I used (#f0f4ff). Set the layer’s blend mode to color.
Final Step
As a final touch, I just increased the contrast and sharpened the lights by making adjustment layers in the “lights” group. The final image is below.
Conclusion
Knowing what you want to do and knowing how to execute it are equally important. I didn’t use any groundbreaking techniques to create this design. I just had a good idea of what I wanted to do, and I did it. You can do the same.
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
By Kyle Pero
Photoshop to HTML
Take your Photoshop skills to the next level by learning how to slice up a PSD into a working standards driven HTML website.
Join our newsletter!
U-Design WordPress Theme only $35.00 
Modernize - Flexibility of W ... only $35.00 
When the storm comes - More
Photoshop Basix
Just getting started? Start with our basix tutorials on the fundamentals. View All Basix Tutorials
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Psdtuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
Thanks for the awesome tutorial!
Regards.
Very helpfull. Thanks for sharing!
WOW! When I looked at the picture in the first post, the final image, I thought that all you did was throw some flames on it in Overlay mode. then you proceeded to completely transform the car into a two door as well. i wouldn’t have known that if you hadn’t posted the tut. incredible job.
uo a week runs out pretty fast in psdtuts… lol
congrats for the 2 tutorials..
if only it would really look like a car
Thanks for this part 2 of the tutorial!
David Carreira
Great job…
Daniel
Very cool tutorial. Nice techniques, nothing groundbraking but well explained and a nice result at the end. Btw, Prius sucks. :p
Part II delivers!
Great stuff.
great tut!
Good work!
The wheels look a tad odd to me, but the rest is ace, thanks
Awesome work
Good tutorial. But I was put off, I thought it was a tutorial to tell us how to create flames that would look great on a car, but instead its a rework of a (horribly ugly) car, into a concept car with flames from illustrator. Maybe something like, Turning an Ugly Car into a New Concept or something?
really awesome stuff! I especially like how you explained WHY you did something, instead of just telling us what to do.
Wow I really like this one.
It probably was hard to get the car from zero…
really really nicely done
very cool work!
WOW, I did not realize where you were going with this tutorial, other than the decal, but the transformation to a one door vehicle is an extra accomplishment, GREAT TUT!!
)
they just get worse and worse.
Very nice tutorial, and the techniques you used can be applied to a wide range of things.
Well the tutorial is cool but there is one problem that is there is too much space between the drivers seat and the steering wheel. That makes it look awkward. Otherwise its good tutorial.
nice wheels!
oh wait…
I have followed your tutorial very closely Kyle and i would like to say that it is absolutely awesome. Thanks for all the effort.
Sweet! thank you!
Pretty nice.
10/10!
Nice tut. Two thumbs up!
huge waste of time. great techniques, but cmon, a prius.?
nice nice =]
Maybe if the Prius looked like that i’d buy one.
Why do all the hybrids or alt-fueled cars thus far look like crap?
well done
really cool
Great to see the conclusion of the tutorial – and good that we didn’t have to wait too long for it
Many thanks for posting.
nice tut, the remodelling of the car is well executed! Thanks!
I dunno, although it looks ok I feel like there’s just way too many steps involved to achieve this result.
Excellent Tutorial. to practicable.
Very good.
Bim bam boum encore un tutoriel de fou….
i dont get it. half of the readers out here whine that we never see anything outside of image manipulation for wallpapers.
we finally get one that shows how to use it to redesign a car, create a concept car, with photoshop/illustrator and people still are not happy?
people get paid to do this for a living, and this is one man’s perspective.
i dont want just web based apps shown here. i like the idea of crossover.
collis, get some more tuts across the spectrum like this and i’ll give you my pinkys AND a year’s subscription. i love seeing something form another field of expertise used this way.
this proves that photoshop, and psdtuts is for everyone!!!!
really it is cool and it used to my blog http://atooooz.blogspot.com
thank you psdtuts
just completed mine! thanks for that
awesome tutorial, will try it soon
Really nice=)but look this:,
Where do I find the flames.ai file?
Hi i have a Auto Glass & Tint shop in Surrey BC Canada. I’m starting to get a lot of customres requesting FLAMES on windows before we TINT it but i need some art work or pre cut flames… Do you have any info on this matter??
Thank you…
Great tutorial thanks
its good i like it
awesome ,your work is beautiful. i like it………….
alwys tutorials looking easy and nice but when we try it’s tuff and you guyzz are asking for premier i am student i can pay pls provide only car image so we can try it and yr car image link is not working no need psd file only little bit high res care image hope u can help me
thanks 4 yr g8 job buddy