Welsh Dan
07-12-07, 12:32 AM
How to change the wheels/colour of my car:
Firstly, instead of condoning piracy of Adobe Photoshop, which costs around ?550 per copy, I’m going to provide instructions on how to use a program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is freely available here: http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gimp-win/gimp-2.4.2-i686-setup.exe
Once you’ve downloaded (its around 15MB) and installed GIMP, open your chosen photograph with it, the one I’m using is available here, and is around 2.4MB in size: http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/S5000299.JPG You should be greeted with something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp1.JPG
Firstly, we’ll handle selection and layers. Think of layers as those transparent bits of paper that were used in school with the overhead projectors. We will be using them to manipulate separate parts of the image without interfering anywhere else. Selection is a means of choosing a certain part of the image to manipulate, or to copy to a separate layer. If you look at the above image, the left most window is my toolbar, and the first 6 icons are the selection tools, however the one we’re interested in is the one that looks like a pair of scissors.
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp2.jpg
This is a fairly clever tool that lets us quickly and easily select a complicated area to work on, we using it by selecting all of the corners of the area that we wish to select, as so, going around in order:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp3.jpg
Once you have completely encircled the area click inside it and the edges will change to look like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp4.jpg
If you’re happy with the selection, click on “edit” and the top of the main window, then click on “copy”, click on “edit” again then click on “paste”. Click on “layer” at the top of the main window then click on “new layer”.
Go to the layers toolbar, and click on the eye icon next to “background” and you should now see something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp5.jpg
Colour change:
The next tool that we’ll be using is the eraser tool, which is the big red/pink one, that looks like a rubber/eraser :p. Our aim here is to ‘rub out’ anything that we don’t want to change, ie my rear light cluster, and all of the glass. Carefully rub away, taking care around the edges, and doing the edges in stages so you can undo any mistakes, until you have something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp6.jpg
Because I’m only doing this quickly for the tutorial, mine looks very messy, yours should look much neater, but bear in mind that you’re only doing this to get a rough idea of how something looks.
Next up is a brief explanation of how we’ll change the colour. Using the HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) method of looking at colour (Hue is the colour itself, ie red blue, saturation is the strength of the colour, and the value is how light or dark it is), we will firstly desaturate this layer, so that it consists only of shades of grey, this prevents any funny looking bits in the next step. To desaturate the layer click on “colours” at the top of the main window, then click “desaturate”, check that “lightness” is selected, then click “desaturate” again. It’ll now look like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp7.jpg
Now we want to pick a colour for our car, click on “colours” at the top of the main window then click on “colourise”. Its now up to you to play around with the sliders until you get the car looking how you want it, then click “OK”.
I picked a nice orange:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp8.jpg
Go back to the layers window and click on the eye next to “background” again. Hey presto, save your file:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/orange.jpg (2.5MB)
I'll cover changing wheels and ride height some time soon :).
Firstly, instead of condoning piracy of Adobe Photoshop, which costs around ?550 per copy, I’m going to provide instructions on how to use a program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is freely available here: http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gimp-win/gimp-2.4.2-i686-setup.exe
Once you’ve downloaded (its around 15MB) and installed GIMP, open your chosen photograph with it, the one I’m using is available here, and is around 2.4MB in size: http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/S5000299.JPG You should be greeted with something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp1.JPG
Firstly, we’ll handle selection and layers. Think of layers as those transparent bits of paper that were used in school with the overhead projectors. We will be using them to manipulate separate parts of the image without interfering anywhere else. Selection is a means of choosing a certain part of the image to manipulate, or to copy to a separate layer. If you look at the above image, the left most window is my toolbar, and the first 6 icons are the selection tools, however the one we’re interested in is the one that looks like a pair of scissors.
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp2.jpg
This is a fairly clever tool that lets us quickly and easily select a complicated area to work on, we using it by selecting all of the corners of the area that we wish to select, as so, going around in order:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp3.jpg
Once you have completely encircled the area click inside it and the edges will change to look like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp4.jpg
If you’re happy with the selection, click on “edit” and the top of the main window, then click on “copy”, click on “edit” again then click on “paste”. Click on “layer” at the top of the main window then click on “new layer”.
Go to the layers toolbar, and click on the eye icon next to “background” and you should now see something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp5.jpg
Colour change:
The next tool that we’ll be using is the eraser tool, which is the big red/pink one, that looks like a rubber/eraser :p. Our aim here is to ‘rub out’ anything that we don’t want to change, ie my rear light cluster, and all of the glass. Carefully rub away, taking care around the edges, and doing the edges in stages so you can undo any mistakes, until you have something like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp6.jpg
Because I’m only doing this quickly for the tutorial, mine looks very messy, yours should look much neater, but bear in mind that you’re only doing this to get a rough idea of how something looks.
Next up is a brief explanation of how we’ll change the colour. Using the HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) method of looking at colour (Hue is the colour itself, ie red blue, saturation is the strength of the colour, and the value is how light or dark it is), we will firstly desaturate this layer, so that it consists only of shades of grey, this prevents any funny looking bits in the next step. To desaturate the layer click on “colours” at the top of the main window, then click “desaturate”, check that “lightness” is selected, then click “desaturate” again. It’ll now look like this:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp7.jpg
Now we want to pick a colour for our car, click on “colours” at the top of the main window then click on “colourise”. Its now up to you to play around with the sliders until you get the car looking how you want it, then click “OK”.
I picked a nice orange:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/gimp8.jpg
Go back to the layers window and click on the eye next to “background” again. Hey presto, save your file:
http://www.xen0phobiak.f2s.com/novaload/tutorial/orange.jpg (2.5MB)
I'll cover changing wheels and ride height some time soon :).