Create a Dramatic Car Speeding Scene

Create a new document of 800×600 pixels. Download City Night Lights by Twittey. Open up the image and drag it into your working document. Rename this layer to "City Lights".

Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer above the "City Lights" layer, check on Colorize and key the Hue to 207, Saturation to 20 and Lightness to 0.

Download Round the Corner from SXC.hu. Extract only the road from the image. Refer to this post for various methods of extractions. Rename this layer as "Road". Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturations. Set the Hue to 0, Saturation to -50 and Lightness to -65.

Duplicate "Road" layer. Select the duplicated layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Invert. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Hue.

Download Car by Grape Stock. Extract the car from its background. Resize and position it as shown in the example below. Rename this layer as "Car".

Duplicate the "Car" layer. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Set the Lightness to 0. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 8px. Name this layer as "Car Shadow".

Select the "Car" layer, right-click on Blending Options and choose Outer Glow. Enter the settings as shown below.

Ctrl+left-click on the "Car" layer. Fill the selection with #FF9C00. Rename this layer as "Car Glow". Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Hard Light and Opacity to 30%. Using the Eraser tool, with Soft Round 200px, eraser around the front of car to reveal its original color.

Create a Levels Adjustments Layer and set the values to 11, 0.88, 255.

Create a new layer and name it as " Light Streaks". Draw 3 white bars as shown in the example.

Go to Edit > Transform > Warp. Adjust the white bars to form an arc facing the right.

Go to Filter > Liquify. Select the Twirl Clockwise tool and create several waves as shown below. Using the Eraser tool, with Soft Round 300px, fade the start and end of the wavy bars.

Right-click on "Light Streaks" layer and choose Outer Glow and Inner Glow. Key in the settings as shown below.

You should be getting something similar to the example below.

Create a new layer and repeat the steps for forming the light streaks with thinner white bars.

Download the Debris Brushes by Zigabooooo. Create a new layer and paint some debris around the wheels. Apply the same blending effects used for white bars to the debris. Reduce the size for Outer Glow to 5px.

Duplicate the "Car" layer. Select the duplicated layer and go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the Angle to 40 and Distance to 50. Using the Eraser tool, with Soft Round 300px, erase some parts to reveal the original car.

Duplicate the "Car" layer again. Select the duplicated layer and go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the Angle to 0 and Distance to 50. Using the Eraser tool, with Soft Round 300px, erase some parts to reveal the original car.

Create a new layer behind the "Car". Rename this layer to "Smoke". Make a irregular selection at the city area with Lasso tool. Go to Select > Modify > Feather. Set the Radius to 50px. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Color Dodge.

Duplicate the "Smoke" layer and set the Blend Mode to Screen.

Create a Levels Adjustment layer. Set the values to 26, 1, 255.

Create a new layer above the car and name it as "Headlights". Make a few circular selections around the headlights of the car. Go to Select > Modify > Feather. Set the Radius to 5px. Fill the selection with #FFFFFF. Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Check on Outer Glow and key in the settings below.

Create a new layer above the headlights. Using Pencil tool with 1px and color #FF6000, draw a cross and place it near the center of a headlight. Use Eraser tool to fade all ends of the cross. Set Opacity of this layer to 30%. Repeat this step for all the headlights.

Now flatten all the layers as if you decided to try out another effect from Topaz Labs again. It is an excellent filter that can be trial use for 30 days with full functions. Install the program and restart Photoshop. Go to Filter > Topaz Labs > Topaz Adjust 3. Open up the Presets on the left and select Exposure Color Stretch. Leave all the settings as default and hit OK. That’s all! Hope you enjoy this tutorial. Thanks.

I am Johnson Koh, a graphic and web designer in Singapore. Founded 10Steps.SG in August 2008 with the purpose to share my experiments and interesting design news.

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40 Responses to “Create a Dramatic Car Speeding Scene”

1. pornocom says:

   December 20, 2009 at 4:11 am

   Comfortabl y, the article is in reality the sweetest on this precious topic. I harmonize with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your future updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the extraordinary clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. De lightful work and much success in your business endeavors!

   Reply
2. evilkitty75 says:

   November 28, 2009 at 4:14 pm

   ok so i love this i reeeeeally want to make it but when i get here….’Ctrl+left-click on the “Car” layer. Fill the selection with #FF9C00. Rename this layer as “Car Glow”. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Hard Light and Opacity to 30%. Using the Eraser tool, with Soft Round 200px, eraser around the front of car to reveal its original color’ the car goes blurry and no matter what i do i does not unblur! help please ^.^

   Reply
   • Johnson Koh says:

     November 29, 2009 at 7:55 am

     Hi there! Are you able to erase the front part of the car on this blurry layer? Or maybe can you send me a screenshot to support@10steps.sg. I will try my best to help from there.
3. Slezy says:

   September 9, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   Great tut!
   Thx

   Reply
4. NANDA says:

   August 31, 2009 at 1:41 pm

   excellent work dude. i’m really impressed with the way u managed to blend the city into the car image. gr8 work. i wonder if u can show us an application of this same effect to a human…maybe to indicate a fast moving superhero like the flash. in his comic books,u can see him running blazing fast with these fire lines all around him.

   Reply
5. saud says:

   August 21, 2009 at 10:43 pm

   i would like to thank you 4 this gr8 tutorial it helps me alot
   many thanks

   Reply
6. Nardyello says:

   August 1, 2009 at 4:03 am

   It’s often hard to start something from scratch and have a vision of what you want it to become. Usually when we see the end result we think it was a two step process and that it’s easy to make.

   Obviously it’s not as easy as a two step process.

   Thank you for this tutorial. The end result looks great.

   Reply
7. ibrahim turan says:

   July 22, 2009 at 2:57 am

   very nice

   Reply
8. Johnson Koh says:

   July 11, 2009 at 11:27 pm

   Glad you like this tut. Cheers!

   Reply
9. Ashish Kalmegh says:

   July 11, 2009 at 1:25 pm

   Awesome !
   This tutorial is really helpful .
   Thanks

   Reply
10. Johnson Koh says:

    July 1, 2009 at 8:53 am

    Thank you my friends!

    Reply
11. UrbanCowboy says:

    June 30, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    I’ll be using this for sure!

    Reply
12. Piyush Shekhar says:

    June 25, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    So amazing this is, Thanks for the Share.

    Reply
13. Jeevan says:

    June 24, 2009 at 10:26 am

    Wow, just amazing. There’s no limitations with Adobe Photoshop.

    Reply
14. Johnson Koh says:

    June 24, 2009 at 7:30 am

    Thanks Akasha and Mars This week is hell for me. More updates to come soon!

    Reply
15. Mars says:

    June 22, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    I envy this work of art, its amazing on, i will make one with my self

    Reply
16. Akasha says:

    June 21, 2009 at 10:20 pm

    Cool. Congrats!

    Your tutorials rullz !

    Reply
17. Johnson Koh says:

    June 21, 2009 at 9:32 am

    Thanks lolo125, Mantiuxa and Corey

    @Florian: Absolutely agree! Thanks for the pointer. Have just added in the headlights.

    Reply
18. Corey says:

    June 21, 2009 at 5:03 am

    Hey,

    I just discovered this site via PSDtuts. I never knew about you! You have some great content on here. Thanks for providing it!

    Reply
19. Mantiuxa says:

    June 21, 2009 at 4:54 am

    I don’t really like result, but tutorial still teaches much! Thanks!

    Reply
20. Florian says:

    June 21, 2009 at 2:22 am

    Cool. One thing you overlooked is that the lights aren’t on. I think that would make this montage a lot more convincing.

    Reply
21. lolo125 says:

    June 21, 2009 at 12:45 am

    Amazing!!!!
    its really cool, because you do it from nothing

    Reply