This is my first post and really my first visit to this Forum and if this has been hashed before please direct me.

I want to take a picture of a car and remove the paint and replace it With a picture of lightning that I have. All I have been able to do is just a mask that looks like a cookie cutter. I have CS3 and I am suffering w/ Vista. I am a newbie to CS3 but I have been using Elements for a while.

I have a sideview of a Civic Si. and several pics of lightning, that i took one night.

Thanks for any help you can give.

BTW I like the CS3s Panoramic maker. It really did a good job on my lightning pics.

hi,
I am not the one to help you on this one (just a novice) but to say if you attach the two pictures the experts on here can work with you and show you the different ways to handle it....

also on the panoramic.. i just saw nice cs3 video tutuorial on panoramic at
http://www.radiantvista.com/ youcan download it from there workbench section...

This is my first post and really my first visit to this Forum and if this has been hashed before please direct me.

I want to take a picture of a car and remove the paint and replace it With a picture of lightning that I have. All I have been able to do is just a mask that looks like a cookie cutter. I have CS3 and I am suffering w/ Vista. I am a newbie to CS3 but I have been using Elements for a while.

I have a sideview of a Civic Si. and several pics of lightning, that i took one night.

Thanks for any help you can give.

BTW I like the CS3s Panoramic maker. It really did a good job on my lightning pics.

hi,
I am not the one to help you on this one (just a novice) but to say if you attach the two pictures the experts on here can work with you and show you the different ways to handle it....

also on the panoramic.. i just saw nice cs3 video tutuorial on panoramic at
http://www.radiantvista.com/ you can download it from there workbench section...

Ok Here are pics. The attachment is The car (it was originally red) is from another forum that I'm on I'll prob try to find a different one later when I do it for real, I Just wanted something to try it out on. The url is one that I took one night on the hood of my truck.
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s226/sjlarue/Lightning1.jpg

This is a panorama shot that wasn't straightened, the finished pic was but i haven't uploaded it yet.http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s226/sjlarue/panorama4.jpg

Thanks for any help you can give me.

SJ

1. Make a duplicate of the car and create a mask to reveal the car and set this layer to multiply mode.
2. Bring in your lightening picture, place it under the masked car and and position it so that the lightening bolt(s) fall where you want them.
3. Go back to the car layer, load the mask and apply it to the lightening bold layer.
4. You may want to duplicate the bolts layer with the top copy set to Multiply Blend mode and play with the opacity to get the depth of color you want.

Forgive me. But coming from Elements all of the wonderful little bells that CS3 has got is driving me mad. When you said make a mask, is the black what you want to reveal, or white? I've created a mask and set it to multiplythis is what I got so far (see attachment) and what do you mean by load the mask. do you save it somewhere? I know these sound like pretty basic questions but that is about where I am, two steps above HEE HAW.

Here is finished product. The background was done that way to compare it to another on the forum.

http://s153.photobucket.com/albums/s226/sjlarue/?action=view&current=chopachopa.jpg