A Belated Christmas Present - Paint Correction & 22ple Application on my Dad's Acura TSX

[zmcgovern45]

Great to see the black pad have such a great correction ability.

^Your telling me - this was some seriously soft paint.

Beautiful. Just Beautiful.

rops:

Great job! My brother has the same body style TSX, love the euro/jap look of that car.

Is tinted clear-coat normal practice? Its the first I have seen.

Also your Lexus looks amazing!!!!

^The tinted clear is not really "normal", but is still found in some colors like this Milano Red for instance. Thanks!

 

[chris.ganucheau]

do you edit the pictures in any way? if not 22ple has the best reflections of any coating i have seen. i mean darker cars always have good reflections but the reflections on that red are amazing.

 

[zmcgovern45]

do you edit the pictures in any way? if not 22ple has the best reflections of any coating i have seen. i mean darker cars always have good reflections but the reflections on that red are amazing.

Hmm... this can be tough to explain if you are not "photography savvy" but I will do my best....

When you take a photo with most Point and Shoot (P&S) cameras, or even DSLR's (unless you specifically change the settings), your camera does several things for you in order to produce the JPEG image that you then download to your computer.

A very basic run down of what your camera is doing is as follows:

• Take the photo
• Process the data based on user settings (white balance, color, contrast, sharpening, etc)
• Compressed and store as JPEG

This processing portion is what I want to focus on. Most point and shoots will allow the user to set certain properties or settings like Color/Contrast with modes like "vivid, landscape, portrait, etc". Often times you can also select the amount of sharpening the camera applies, which white balance the camera uses (usually "auto"), etc. All of these settings are then applied to each photo as you take it, leaving you no room to adjust the settings to make the photo look more realistic to what you see with your eye. I'm sure you have taken a photo and then looked at it later on the computer and thought "Why does this picture look blue?" or "Man, that looked much better in person". Often times your camera's processing settings just don't cut it when it comes to producing the best images possible. That is why I shoot in RAW format. This allows me to take an image and the camera will do absolutely nothing to the image. No added sharpening, no added contrast, no white balance adjustment, etc etc. It is left as raw data that was captured.

Raw files are massive when compared to JPEG because they contain massive amounts of data. A 16MP camera, for instance, may produce JPEG files that are 3-6mb while the RAW file may be 15-30mb a piece. These Raw files must then be processed using software such as Adobe Camera Raw (within Photoshop) or Adobe Lightroom (there are others as well, but these are the most common). This step is often referred to as "post processing" by most photographers. This simply means that instead of the camera processing the image for you and compressing the photo to JPEG and getting rid of all of that raw data, you now have complete control of the final image based on how you process it.

So to answer your question, the images were processed in Adobe Lightroom... I hate to use the word "edit" or "photoshopped" as most people think of that as creating something fake or unreal in the image.

My standard tweaks that I do in post production are as follows:

• Adjust exposure if needed
• Correct white balance for proper color representation
• Add contrast
• Add Sharpening
• Local adjustments if needed
• Export file as JPEG

^So you see that I do not do anything more than what your camera will do for you (except for correcting the exposure if needed), however I have complete control of how much or how little I do, while your camera treats each image identically. You may think this sounds like an awful lot of work, but the nice thing is that if you are taking photos in the same environment - say in your garage - and the lighting does not change and your camera settings do not change, you can "batch process" this group of images together once you find the settings you would like to apply in post-processing. I believe it took me 5-10 min total to process all of the images used in the original post (that includes several images I did not end up posting in the thread).

Here is an example of a photo I took of my friend's Audi... this is the RAW image, straight out of the camera.

^You can see that the image is a bit "cool" meaning the white balance is off, it needs to be warmed up. It is also lacking some "punch" - so I will add some contrast. It is also a touch dark, so I will bump up the exposure a touch.

Here is the image after processing in Adobe Lightroom and exporting as a final JPEG.

^You will notice the colors are much warmer, richer, and more pleasing now (which matches the nice summer day on which this photo was taken). There is some real punch now, due to the contrast, and the scene was brightened a bit by bumping up the exposure of the shadows. Nothing was altered or "editied" to look like something it is not.

Now, because this car was in horrible shape and seriously needs a paint correction, I spent a couple of hours removing all of the distracting swirls and stuff that are clearly visible in the reflection of the flash on the door/fender. This is what I would call an edited image. It was visually altered in photoshop to add and/or remove items from the image in order to enhance the image. This would be insane to do on an entire batch of images due to the extreme amount of work that needs to be done.

So to answer your initial question... All of the images that I post for my detailing threads have all been shot in RAW format and then processed quickly in Lightroom to produce the most accurate representation of how the car looked in person.

The reflections in the red paint are as they appear in real life... it looked awesome!

If you would like, I can post some pics of RAW images vs. Processed images of this car when I get home later so you can see the minimal difference... let me know.

Hope that helps to answer the question?

-Zach

 

[noslef]

That TSX looks amazing! I know what you mean about soft paint; my wife drives a 2006 TSX. I used LC black pads, XMT 2 and Meguiar's Ultimate Polish and the paint came out great. I'll post up some pics of it soon.

 

[SuperiorAutoLLC]

Looks amazing! Like it was just painted!

Nice work.


:dblthumb2:

That's exactly what I was thinking! Your dad must be stoked!!

 

[WRAPT C5Z06]

You got that correction with M205 and a BLACK PAD?! Talk about soft paint!!!!

Great job!! :dblthumb2:

 

[Lexi65]

Hmm... this can be tough to explain if you are not "photography savvy" but I will do my best....

When you take a photo with most Point and Shoot (P&S) cameras, or even DSLR's (unless you specifically change the settings), your camera does several things for you in order to produce the JPEG image that you then download to your computer.

A very basic run down of what your camera is doing is as follows:

• Take the photo
• Process the data based on user settings (white balance, color, contrast, sharpening, etc)
• Compressed and store as JPEG

This processing portion is what I want to focus on. Most point and shoots will allow the user to set certain properties or settings like Color/Contrast with modes like "vivid, landscape, portrait, etc". Often times you can also select the amount of sharpening the camera applies, which white balance the camera uses (usually "auto"), etc. All of these settings are then applied to each photo as you take it, leaving you no room to adjust the settings to make the photo look more realistic to what you see with your eye. I'm sure you have taken a photo and then looked at it later on the computer and thought "Why does this picture look blue?" or "Man, that looked much better in person". Often times your camera's processing settings just don't cut it when it comes to producing the best images possible. That is why I shoot in RAW format. This allows me to take an image and the camera will do absolutely nothing to the image. No added sharpening, no added contrast, no white balance adjustment, etc etc. It is left as raw data that was captured.

Raw files are massive when compared to JPEG because they contain massive amounts of data. A 16MP camera, for instance, may produce JPEG files that are 3-6mb while the RAW file may be 15-30mb a piece. These Raw files must then be processed using software such as Adobe Camera Raw (within Photoshop) or Adobe Lightroom (there are others as well, but these are the most common). This step is often referred to as "post processing" by most photographers. This simply means that instead of the camera processing the image for you and compressing the photo to JPEG and getting rid of all of that raw data, you now have complete control of the final image based on how you process it.

So to answer your question, the images were processed in Adobe Lightroom... I hate to use the word "edit" or "photoshopped" as most people think of that as creating something fake or unreal in the image.

My standard tweaks that I do in post production are as follows:

• Adjust exposure if needed
• Correct white balance for proper color representation
• Add contrast
• Add Sharpening
• Local adjustments if needed
• Export file as JPEG

^So you see that I do not do anything more than what your camera will do for you (except for correcting the exposure if needed), however I have complete control of how much or how little I do, while your camera treats each image identically. You may think this sounds like an awful lot of work, but the nice thing is that if you are taking photos in the same environment - say in your garage - and the lighting does not change and your camera settings do not change, you can "batch process" this group of images together once you find the settings you would like to apply in post-processing. I believe it took me 5-10 min total to process all of the images used in the original post (that includes several images I did not end up posting in the thread).

Here is an example of a photo I took of my friend's Audi... this is the RAW image, straight out of the camera.

^You can see that the image is a bit "cool" meaning the white balance is off, it needs to be warmed up. It is also lacking some "punch" - so I will add some contrast. It is also a touch dark, so I will bump up the exposure a touch.

Here is the image after processing in Adobe Lightroom and exporting as a final JPEG.

^You will notice the colors are much warmer, richer, and more pleasing now (which matches the nice summer day on which this photo was taken). There is some real punch now, due to the contrast, and the scene was brightened a bit by bumping up the exposure of the shadows. Nothing was altered or "editied" to look like something it is not.

Now, because this car was in horrible shape and seriously needs a paint correction, I spent a couple of hours removing all of the distracting swirls and stuff that are clearly visible in the reflection of the flash on the door/fender. This is what I would call an edited image. It was visually altered in photoshop to add and/or remove items from the image in order to enhance the image. This would be insane to do on an entire batch of images due to the extreme amount of work that needs to be done.

So to answer your initial question... All of the images that I post for my detailing threads have all been shot in RAW format and then processed quickly in Lightroom to produce the most accurate representation of how the car looked in person.

The reflections in the red paint are as they appear in real life... it looked awesome!

If you would like, I can post some pics of RAW images vs. Processed images of this car when I get home later so you can see the minimal difference... let me know.

Hope that helps to answer the question?

-Zach

Would love to see the RAW images. Thnx!

 

[zmcgovern45]

That TSX looks amazing! I know what you mean about soft paint; my wife drives a 2006 TSX. I used LC black pads, XMT 2 and Meguiar's Ultimate Polish and the paint came out great. I'll post up some pics of it soon.

^Nice! Look forward to seeing some pics!

That's exactly what I was thinking! Your dad must be stoked!!

^He was very pleased! He had started to grow tired of his red paint because he thought it was turning pink... fixed that problem!

You got that correction with M205 and a BLACK PAD?! Talk about soft paint!!!!

Great job!! :dblthumb2:

^No kidding! I was surprised! Luckily I was anticipating pretty soft paint thanks to some advice from Rasky!

Would love to see the RAW images. Thnx!

^I can PM you some before/afters... don't want to get this thread too far off topic. Most people don't care about photography... just shiny paint :buffing:

 

[PedroMalheiro]

very nice job! it looks amazing

 

[1953hogan]

So to answer your question, the images were processed in Adobe Lightroom... I hate to use the word "edit" or "photoshopped" as most people think of that as creating something fake or unreal in the image.

My standard tweaks that I do in post production are as follows:

• Adjust exposure if needed
• Correct white balance for proper color representation
• Add contrast
• Add Sharpening
• Local adjustments if needed
• Export file as JPEG

-Zach

From one Lightroom user to another, nice work with the camera AND with the car! Sounds like your Lightroom process is very close to mine. When shooting a vehicle or something important, RAW is definitely the way to go!

I'm about to start correcting my black Acura TL. I think I'll follow your lead and shoot RAW for a potential "Show and Shine" post.

Best,

Steve

 

[zmcgovern45]

I shoot in RAW for everything... can't ever find a reason not to.

 

[LatinFG2]

That TSX came out pretty sweet!

 

[zmcgovern45]

Thanks, I thought so too!