JONATHAN TATUM
PHOTOSHOP RENDERING

Jonathan Tatum is a BA graduate from Coventry School of Art and Design (UK) and MA graduate from Umeå Institute of Design (Sweden). Currently working for Menard Engineering UK, he has had previous experience in the studios of Land Rover, MG Rover and Jaguar cars. He is also the 2005 winner of the Interior Motives award for Best Conceptual Interior. In this tutorial he will take you through the process he uses to create polished Photoshop renderings. A lot of the techniques used here are an extension of the techniques he has learnt from Harald Belker’s video tutorial. Further examples of his work can be found on his website at www.jonathantatum.com

 

Create a line sketch using as accurate perspective as possible since every perspective mistake made at this stage will be more evident once the shading has been applied, although there are opportunities to correct this later on.
Once the sketch has been scanned in, open the ‘levels’ box and use the picker tool to select and remove any dirt from the scanned image.
Switch this layer to multiply and make sure you keep it at the top of your layers throughout the whole process.
 

Using the paths tool, select the outer line of the image and fill with a very dark grey. ‘Path’ the outer line of the cars bodywork and fill with a lighter grey on a new layer. Adjust the brightness of the lower part of the body to give a shadow break. It is a good idea to feather the body layer to blend into the background colour. To ensure you do not encroach on the window area when building the path for the outer body, you can also build the window paths at the same time. Then hold down shift and drag a selection over the window path you have just created. Copy this onto a new path layer. When you make the path a selection it will choose the area between the outer and inner paths created.

Using the ‘body’ path selection, apply a darker grey in the main focus point (closest corner). This will help add depth to that area later on.

On a new layer using the ‘body’ path, add some orange colour [approximately 60% opacity] to the focal point of the car making sure to fade out into the outer edges. It is also a good idea to add some sky colour. For this I would make a few sweeping brush strokes on a new layer, making sure some of the spread of the brush stroke hits the outer edge of the bodywork. Invert the body path selection afterwards to delete anything that isn’t on the body. Then ‘merged link’ the two layers with the orange and sky colour, feather the inverted body layer selection. To add more depth, make a separate path for all darker areas and shadows, with this path selected go to ‘brightness and contrast’ and adjust to a darker level.