Mini Cars....

[POLICE]

Can somebody do mine?

Thanks

[RusH_]

done,

[HuH]

Can I request two? Pretty please? One of my Skyline and one of my Mini. I need better photos of both but these are all I have for now. Thanks. Both need a bit of a touch up of levels and whatnot too.

[RBLUV]

hey man could you do mine please

hope the pics are good enough

cheers,

Kyle

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

Hey AGE and RusH!

Think you can make my cars into Mini Cars?

[RusH_]

WOW!, a sudden influx of mini requests, ok lets see if i can make a dent in this

and a mini mini, tha farrrkk?! lol

[RusH_]

and the next 2...

this first one u actually get to sit in ur mini, and not be a mini urself!

[RusH_]

and the last 2

that 34 is porn!

[HuH]

Yes! Mini Mini! Nice one. Thanks, mate.

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

Hey Rush!

Bro that is friggin awesome!

Thanks A lot!

BTW Iam still trying to figure out how you do it in Photoshop, LOL!

[RusH_]

lol, cheers man, i think a page or 2 back some1 described how to do it

otherwise did u want me to find/make up a quick tut?

Edited July 16, 2008 by RusH_

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

lol, cheers man, i think a page or 2 back some1 described how to do it

otherwise did u want me to find/make up a quick tut?

Hey yeah that be great!

Thanks man!

[=premo=]

please?

[RusH_]

ok here she is,

sorry (00)SKYLINE(00) im feelin real lazy bein a friday, but i will do up a simple tut soon for ya

[ajrichar]

Hey Rush!

Bro that is friggin awesome!

Thanks A lot!

BTW Iam still trying to figure out how you do it in Photoshop, LOL!

I wrote one of these 'how-tos' because no-one showed me and I wanted to share it with others. It's actually very easy (as long as you have Photoshop). I think RusH does his a little differently to me because he adds camber to wheels whereas I do not.

I posted these how-to's on both the Biante Model car forum and DiecastXchange model car forums, but I'll post it here too with your indulgence.

I set out below a step-by-step process at how to create one of the small

‘Mini’ cars I have made.

Start with the best quality picture of your chosen car as you can. It is best (and easier) to also have a picture where the camera was about the same level as the car. If you have a shot looking down, it is so much harder to meld the wheels and arches to the car as the angles are all out.

We will start with a picture of the McLaren F1 longtail racecar in Fina sponsorship from the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The picture is a good one to start with because the angle of the camera is at approximately the same height as the car itself. In addition, race cars tend to look better as finished products than road cars when you give them the ‘Mini’ car treatment.

This first picture below is the standard picture opened in Photoshop (in this case Photoshop CS3).

Using the ‘Polygonal Lasso Tool’ (see red line identifying it) carefully cut out around the wheels arches and the wheels. It works best if you have just the slightest bit of wheel arch with it as you cut it out. See image below.

Once you have done this, copy the cut out wheel and wheel arch into a new Photoshop window (ie. Press Ctrl+C, then press Ctrl+N, then in the new window press Ctrl+V).

Do the same with the rear wheel. Ensure that a very fine section of the wheel arch is removed with the ‘Polygonal Lasso Tool’. Copy and paste the rear wheel into its own window. I have hidden the wheels behind the main image so they can’t be seen here.

With the normal image in front of you, Click the ‘Edit’ menu tile, then scroll down and click on ‘Free Transform’.

'Free Transform’ allows you to manipulate the image by ‘squeezing’ it as we will do, or spinning it. In the image below, locate the small section (circled), then click and drag it right. This will start squeezing the image together.

Once you have dragged it a little to the right (how far you ‘squeeze’ it is up to you and takes some trial and error), you do the same from the other side and ‘squeeze’ the image the same amount. Once you are happy with how far the image has been squeezed from both sides, click the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ (identified by the red arrow).

This will prompt you to save the image in the new dimensions. Click ‘Apply’. ***Note, if you are unhappy at how far you have squeezed the image and wish to change it, click Ctrl+Z to undo. This easy shortcut works with anything on Photoshop.

With the image now ‘saved’, bring back the windows for the front and rear wheels. We are going to apply the ‘unsqueezed’ wheels to the squeezed image, which is what gives it the ‘Mini’ look.

Copy the first wheel and paste it onto the main image.

Using the ‘Move Tool’ (identified by the big red arrow), drag the wheel over the approximate space where the wheel arch should be. This can be tricky because the whole car is now out of proportion so you have to get it sitting as accurately as possible. There will invariably be overlaps and missing sections where the pasted normal sized wheel doesn’t cover the whole of the new area in some places, but completely obscures other places. The trick to making the car look as real as possible is to minimise these issues and meld it all together.

The image above shows the gap between the wheel arch on the new squeezed image and the wheel from the old normal sized car. Use the ‘Eyedropper Tool’ to get the closest colour and fill it in very carefully. It helps me by increasing the size of the image to either 200% or 300% so I can work more carefully.

Do the same for the rear wheel.

The image below shows the gaps that have to be fixed when the rear wheel went on. The rear wheel, as you can see, requires more fixing than the front to meld it nicely to the bodywork.

How much work you have to do to the bodywork and wheels depends on the car, but becomes even more difficult when you choose an image from a different angle, like looking down on the car.

With the bodywork filled in and patched up, the car is now essentially ready to go.

Save the image as a jpeg or bmp or gif and close it down, then reopen it to crop out unnecessary sections – remember, the image will now have large sections above and below the car in the middle where the image was squeezed. I usually crop these out.

Below is the final picture of the ‘Mini’ car. It may not be the best or easiest way of doing things but this process works for me!

Cheers, Andrew

[Basti]

*applause*

[=premo=]

Nice and simple, I like it. Now if we can work out how to keep the roof low and the front bar's wide...?

Thanks for doing mine

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

*Applause*

Hey Andrew thanks, thats great!

Cool!

[(OO)SKYLINE(OO)]

Ah that cool RusH_

Thanks again tho, the car looks funny as.

And looks like ajrichar beat ya to it LOL!

Anyway both of you have been great help.

[RusH_]

hey aj, nice tut man, you are right, we do ours quite differently as a matter of fact, for side on views its very basic to move the wheel after shrinking the car, but for the angled views i deal with those on a case by case basis, i prefer to turn the wheels a bit sometimes depending on the angle because when shrinking a pic of a car thats on an angle the wheels already look thin and it just makes the car look squashed as opposed to being a mini, i also sometimes warp the body a little, its not noticeably warped but makes the car less squashed, when i get time ill show u guys what i mean.

Steve