Pearlscent car color change

First you have to take some good image of the car, I used one I took at a local tuning event this summer. It’s an Opel Astra, already pimped to a certain level, so we have a good base start. The background sucked, so i removed it and placed nice shadow underneath of the car.


There are many other things wrong with this image, but it will serve its purpose.


I will change the color of the upper part of the car. I always loved that looks on the car, especially if the upper part is darker. I take my Pen tool (keyboard shortcut “P”) and start adding anchor points. You should be familiar with the basic use of the Pen tool (you can find some interesting tutorials here at Pure-Graphics.Org) I manipulate the anchor points so I can create more precise selection later.


I am following the car line under the windows, and circling the hood and the roof. Right click with Pen tool active and choose Make selection, Feather radius: 0, and Antialiased checked.


Since we wish to change only the color of the paint, we must exclude the windows from the selection. Use the Pen tool to select the windows, right click and choose Make selection again, and this time choose option Subtract from selection:


Now you will only have a paint selected and you can work on it without worrying you going to mess something else.


OK, save your selection by going Select>Save selection. Give your selection some name so you can remember later and click OK. This way you have selection stored and you can call it anytime by choosing Load selection from Select menu.


First we are going to copy/paste selected paint. Click CTRL+C (copy) and than CTRL+V (paste), you will get a new layer with paint only. This is a good trick try to remember it!

Desaturate this layer by clicking CTRL+U. In case you are wondering what will this do, it will take the color from the layer, so you will be left with grey layer.

It keeps all the information about the highlights and shadows but takes the saturation away. Moving on! There is one small icon in you layer palette named Lock Transparent pixels, it’s highlighted in the image:


This will make the transparent pixels un-editable. Further explained, if you have layer with transparent pixels you will not be bale to edit them. This way we can work only on the part of the layer which is filled with color. Pasted paint in our case. This is one cool option so make sure you mental-note it.

Take a Gradient Tool and choose a three color gradient.


Apply it horizontally from the back to the front of the car.


Looks ugly, but one Blending mode change will make all the difference in the world. Change the Layer Blending mode to Color and there you go, a whole different story:


How bout that, yeah well combo is good for my sister, but I would go for something less, well darker. After all I prefer JDM cars, and not German.