Tutorials

Cropping Backgrounds of Vehicles

Tags: Beginner, Photoshop

Since I work in the automotive industry, cropping out background of trucks and SUVs is almost a daily task. Some times getting the shadow and reflection of the vehicles can be hard to crop, but this technique will surely make it an ease for you.

Final Image Preview

Lets get started!

Step 1.

Open up the original image in Photoshop, we will start by duplicating this image (Ctrl + J). As I have advised before, always name your layers.

Step 2.

Go to your Photoshop tools palette, and select the Pen Tool. If you are not familiar with how to use this tool, here is a good tutorial to get your started. (If you are new to using this tool, it can be a bit rough to get used to how it works, but after you get it down, it’s very useful).

Let’s trace around the entire vehicle without the background or shadow.

*Tip: When you are using the pen tool to trace around objects, turn the Fill property to 0% (Located at the top right corner of your layers palette). When tracing, zoom in so you can catch the details. Holding the space bar while scrolling up and down on your mouse allows you to zoom in and out of an object. Holding the space bar can also allow you to move your canvas around easier similar to the ‘hand tool’.

Step 3.

Once you have the shape of the vehicle completed, let’s make a selection of this shape. To make a selection from a shape, hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and with your mouse, click on the vector mask thumbnail. If you did this correct, you will have dotted lines around your shape, from here, we will select the ‘Base’ layer and duplicate that selection area (Ctrl + J). Let’s name this new layer as ‘Vehicle’

Step. 4

Let’s now carry over the natural shadow that the vehicle had. Go back to the ‘Base’ layer and on your Photoshop tools palette, select the Lasso Tool. With the lasso tool, let’s draw a circle around the reflection and shadow of the vehicle. After the selection is made (be sure you are on the ‘Base’ layer), on your top menu, go to Select -> Feather (Ctrl + Alt + D) and make the feather radius to 50px. Let’s now duplicate this selection (Ctrl + J). Name this layer ‘Shadow’.

Step. 5

From this point, let’s turn off the visibility of the ‘Base’ layer. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N), and name this layer ‘Green Screen’. Fill it with red for now (this is just so you can see the background differences).

Step 6.

Its now time to blend our ‘shadow’ layer with the ‘green screen’ layer. Select the shadow layer, and on top of your layers palette, use the blending mode drop down and select ‘Linear Burn’.

Finally, we need to make the windows more realistic by making them see through. This is a tricky step so read carefully.

We will first start by tracing around the windows using the pen tool. You will end up with 3 layers in my example. To combine them all into one layer, highlight all 3 layers, and we will now merge them (Ctrl + E).

Let’s select our merged layer by holding Ctrl and with your mouse, clicking on the layer. Next, we will select the inverse selection (Ctrl + Shift + I).

Then while the inverse selection is selected, we will mask the ‘Vehicle’ layer.

After the vehicle layer has been masked, we will select the shape of the mask we just added by holding the Ctrl key and with your mouse clicking on the ‘Layer Mask Thumbnail’

Now, we need to select the inverse selection again (Ctrl + Shift + I). At this point you should be back with the selection (dotted lines) just around where the windows are.

With the window area still selected, go to your Photoshop tools palette and select the brush tool. Go to the Brush Pre Set Picker at the top left corner (by the top menu), and choose the Soft Round 100px Brush and also tone the brush opacity down to 50%.
At this time, you should now check on the bottom of your Photoshop palette to be sure that you have the foreground color set to white. Now brush the outer areas of the window lightly.

Your finally done! Now you can add some back drops in there for the final touch-ups.

Final Image Preview

Have any comments or questions? Feel free to let me know.