Speedster on a dirt road

[Speedster]

I really love this KeyShot Cloud backplate by chiic!  I'd use it for medical devices if I could get away with it!  There's just something about the super-saturation that grabs me.

After a year of medical devices I realized my comp skills were rusty, so this was a good excuse to practice.  I heavily tweaked the backplate in Photoshop CS5, stripping in and warping a dirt road more suited to my favorite model (and namesake) the 1913 Model T Speedster.  We have a lot of dirt roads here in Santa Fe, New Mexico (used to live on one, absolute hell in the winter!) and I have noticed that small leaves and stuff tend to blow to the edges, while larger debris mounds in the center of the road.

I rendered out only the model as a .png with alpha, then hid the model and rendered only the backplate as a .jpg.  That way it was easy to use the Place command in CS5 for the final comp.

Tip- I also rendered out only the original backplate, then used the original backplate as a layer.  I then created a black window mask above it, stripping out the original road using the select tool to isolate the paved road.  The window then gave me a guide outline for the resizing and warping of the dirt road image.

The second image was created in FilterForge, tweaked in CS5.

Bill G

[Will Gibbons]

Hey Bill!

I like the sepia-toned one personally. I think it fits the character of the model. The saturation of the first one is a bit distracting to me. One thing is that something makes the Speedster look a bit large. Not sure if it's perspective or what. Am I losing it?

[Speedster]

One thing is that something makes the Speedster look a bit large.

I  agree, now that you mention it.  It's a one-lane road, so that was sort of my guideline.

I also agree that the color is a bit over-saturated.  I've been doing blah grey medical device backgrounds for so long that I kind of went crazy!  But that's actually what chiic's backplate is, which is what grabbed me.  I'll play a bit with the saturation.

Bill G

[Speedster]

Desaturated the backplate just a bit- I think it's an improvement?
Bill G