Getting pearl paint to "pop"

[Jackson Pennell]

Hello everyone, first post here.

Anyways, I'm doing a photoshoot in seven hours and the owner of the car called me up wondering if I can make his paint stand out more.

The car is a Nissan Skyline R32, it is a gloss black but it has a flake/pearl style finish that he really wants to stand out because he just got it painted.

Any recommendations, so far I'm planning on trying out my camera flash, and maybe a flashlight.

[Mike Ditz]

Two Rules: Color or Shapes

Rule 1.The more direct the light is on the car, the more the colors will pop and stuff like sparkly paint will come alive. What you give up is seeing the shape of the car , the subtle bends in the sheet metal are lost because of the flat, or hard or direct light and the corresponding shadows.

Rule 2. The"liquid light" around "magic hour" brings out the shapes and form in the bodywork, but many times, due to the limited spectrum (lots of blue) the colors suffer (especially warm colors, red turns to mud, etc.), and you won't see any sparkle if the sun has dropped below the horizon, as the paint needs direct light to pop. The colors in a later shot can be helped in PS (old timers used to use filter packs) to be brought back to somnething that you like, so shoot raw.

So what you end up with is about 5 minutes where there is a perfect balance and that is when you shoot like crazy.

But for your particular shoot, black is the hardest color to shoot, unless things are perfect. Do some shotss with direct light, maybe some details or medium shots. Depends on what Mr. Client wants and expects.

[Jacob Leveton]

black?! get the paint to 'pop' ?

tell him that he should have painted the car something that won't absorb the majority of light that hits it.

[Donnell McAllister]

yeah seriously, that's going to be nearly impossible to get what he wants. really the only way would be to get a close up of the paint, maybe showing off the GTR logo or the interestingly shaped taillights on the R32, with a harsh light about 45 degrees off from you lighting up the pearl in the paint. but as far as getting a shot of the whole car like that, i just don't think it will work.

[Daniel Buck]

I would suggest taking 2 or 3 different exposures and blending them together. I'm not sure really how a "pearl black" paint would work, but for the background in general, black cars are hard to shoot unless you are in a good location. For black cars, I usually end up taking 2 exposures, one for the car, and one for the sky, then fade the two together (either that, or use a neutral density grad filter).

As far as the pop on the pearl, some subtle flashes in the right position might kick up the highlights of the pearl? I don't have any experience with using lights or flashes on cars though. It may just boil down to a good exposure (nothing to dark, nothing to bright) and then kicking up the pearl highlight in photoshop with a soft mask.

[Jackson Pennell]

I wasn't able to get the pearl to show in the majority of the shots, it kind-of looked like dust specs that I just later cloned out...

But the shoot turned out well.

[Daniel Buck]

I wasn't able to get the pearl to show in the majority of the shots, it kind-of looked like dust specs that I just later cloned out...

But the shoot turned out well.

hope to see some of the shots :-)