Instead of making heaps of tutorials i've decided to make a thread on how to photoshop and what makes a good chop good.

1. Keep it clean. To me this is what makes a good chop, I would prefer a clean chop with very subtle changes (colour change and rims lets say) to a very unclean chop with carbon fibre, vinyls, crazy rims, etc...

2. Practice, keep trying, if your entering a photoshop competition and you want to try out a new mod to the car practice on a similiar image. It helps you a lot.

3. Never try anything new on an important chop (for a competition or something). Theres nothing worse than stuffing up a mod and not being able to get rid of your mistake.

4. Think of the design before you start photoshopping. It helps down the line because you know what you want to go for.

5. Only ever photoshop a car if you know you can make it look better. You might do some pretty amazing things to it but if you've ruined the overall look of the car people will say your a willy.

6. No chop is going to be perfect, just try your best and thats all anyone can ever ask of you.

I'll edit this with more tips later on.:)

I would like to add:

Take your time, because my entry for comp 57 was kinda done in a quicky, and it shows

Very Very Very Good Tips!

all is correct! QUALITY AND NOT QUANTITY!!

Congratulations Jamesy!

Yeah, this thread has helped me a lot, something to stop and think about. Anyway for the PSCOMP58, so far I have done the following to it, Jamesy, let me know if these are 'too much' or overmodded or crazy looking.

- lowered
- paint job: dark orange
- flame burst vynil
- rim changes - from a BMW M6.
- part of headlight changed to orange.
- there might be more, but for now that's it.

And now I figure out why GT King has so many votes in the PSCOMP57 Voting thread, i'm thinking why has he got a lot of votes when all he's done is swap the rims, change the colour, add some rain, and add a Z3 vent... No wonder I'm so unpopular in PS Comps. I have finally realized the truth about how really the voting works. looks like clean chops with hardly any mods would steal the votes.

Anyway expect my entry soon for 58, it looks good in my opinion, it doesnt look too overmodded. ;)
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^If you can pull it off cleanly then it will be one hell of a chop. If you need any help with it pm me and i'll help ya.

I think I've done a good, bright and brilliant chop, I really want to get some votes for this comp, in last comp i put in a lot of effort but didnt get as many votes... :(

Anyway, I've posted up my entry (work in progress) for the PSCOMP58. Go and have a look and please, please, put a decent comment on mine and tell me what to improve on or suggestions or comments. ;) thanks.

friendly jamesy? when did this happen...

good tips tho... less is more kids

oh great, so we should all add rims, paint the car, and leave it.
heres a story that i think defines photoshop.
today in school, we had I.T. and we were asked to bring up photoshop and play around with it a bit. So of course, me, i as always had with me every ps picture i ever did on my usb, so for fun i brought up my 911 chop and told the teacher i was done.
She was pretty amazed, so she showed everyone in our class, who were also amazed. Thats what makes a great photoshop, if you paint the car and add rims, people will just say nice, and if you do a chop to te best of your ability then people will stand there amazed
personally i prefer to amaze people than do some crappy textbook chop.

of course for the rest of the leason people were constantly asking me how to do, everything. ahh, leave me alone.

basically the moral is that ps is about taking an image and making it into somthing amazing, of course you should consider quality and not make a total mess of it, but don't let it stop you creating a masterpiece

p.s. also if you do very little, of course its going to be clean because theres nothing to go wrong

Yeah, this thread has helped me a lot, something to stop and think about. Anyway for the PSCOMP58, so far I have done the following to it, Jamesy, let me know if these are 'too much' or overmodded or crazy looking.

- lowered
- paint job: dark orange
- flame burst vynil
- rim changes - from a BMW M6.
- part of headlight changed to orange.
- there might be more, but for now that's it.

And now I figure out why GT King has so many votes in the PSCOMP57 Voting thread, i'm thinking why has he got a lot of votes when all he's done is swap the rims, change the colour, add some rain, and add a Z3 vent... No wonder I'm so unpopular in PS Comps. I have finally realized the truth about how really the voting works. looks like clean chops with hardly any mods would steal the votes.

Anyway expect my entry soon for 58, it looks good in my opinion, it doesnt look too overmodded. ;)
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Yeah, exactly correct. You should never put too much modifications on your car in ps, you should keep it neat and only put mods that are simple yet effective. That way you should have a good chop. Thats how you get votes. I've seen some of the chops you sent me and they're great, but they don't look that realistic becuase you did too many mods to it.

So to sum it up, do some mods but not too little or it will look boring and not too much or you will overdo it. But i would rather do too little than too much IMO.

Anyways that just my opinion, great thread James, this should be very helpful to first time photoshoppers.

Good post jamesy this is great help for all photochoppers out there. Also I would like to add a few things if you don't mind jamesy:
Don't work on small images, they suck with a capital S
Also make sure when you are using a donor car for bodykits, rime etc., make sure it is on a similar angle and a colour that can be changed easily.
Also for some tutorials visit either www.digimods.co.uk (http://www.digimods.co.uk) or www.photoshopchop.com (http://www.photoshopchop.com) 2 good sites for tutorials. Also don't forget to check out jamesy tutorials which are in this section somewhere and are very good help.