If you want to give your car a little personality in Photoshop, it's actually very simple. You can make just about any 'attitude' you want by using the liquify filter, and altering the eyes. You'll need a photo of the vehicle you want to transform. I choose a 2009 Camaro concept.

• Open your image in Photoshop and scale it to a good working size. If your image is not clean, you may want to clean it up a bit first.
  
  
• Click on Filter > Liquify to start working out the facial details. Use the liquify tool to adjust the headlamp housing area to your liking. If you want the same look that I used, you can use the following brush settings (every other setting is default so far). This time around I am giving the right eyebrow more of a raise than the left :
  
  
  
  
  
• Now zoom in on the image headlights, while still in the Liquify tool. Change your brush size to 19. This where you want to edit the actual outsides of the 'eyes/headlamps' to give it individual character. I've made mine a little bigger and sinister this time because I want more emotion evoked from the eyes :

Next we are going to make the 'mouth' of our car emote a little. The trick here is not to overdue this Photoshop technique application, or you'll end making it look too unrealistic. You need to keep the car 'mouth' intact in the end so that it still looks like its part of the photograph.

• Open up the liquify tool again. This time zoom in on the mouth/lower air intake area. You'll want to set your brush density down to around 34. This is so you don't smudge the image out of proportion. Sticking with my 'angry eyes' theme - I want somewhat of a quivering/angry mouth. So I just used the following brush settings, and pushed up on the lower and upper parts of the mouth at somewhat matching intervals :
  
  
  
  
  
• I'm done here because I got mine where I want it for now. You can zoom in again and lower your brush size once more to around 13 to add some fine details to yours if you want. Here's an example where I did sharp pull offs with the brush set to size 13, density 45. It almost looks like noseart from an aircraft :

I actually like that one - so I'll go ahead and stick with this Photoshop result for the rest of the tutorial. Next we'll adjust our window to our liking.

Now we want to adjust the windows to our liking using the available lighting options in Photoshop. The choices are numerous, but I'll just outline the methods I used, and show you an example for each. This is a choose your own path tutorial - have fun with it!

• One of the many ways you can adjust the lighting and color in Photoshop is with the Photo Filter. Use your Magic Wand tool (press W) to select the main windshield. You will likely have to add to your selection, but in the end you want the whole front windsheild selected.
  
  
• With the windshield selected, select Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter. Below I've applied a cooling filter with a density of 50. You can fiddle with the options and see what you like best :

You may notice a ring of the color you added to the windshield around it. If you don't like this effect ( I didn't ), you can simply make a duplicate layer of your selected windshield, apply the filter, and then erase the parts you don't want shaded, much like this :



Now if want to, you can apply the same effect to the side window. You may end up with varied results because the overall lighting condition will be different depending on what you apply. I'm just leaving my front window 'tinted' for now.

Now we have a great basis for own Photoshop Car. Let's turn on those fog lamps, and apply some texture. You do not have to add a texture to your image, but I wanted mine more like a cartoon or television image to detract from the 'perfect look' it has. Your image may be different so adjust accordingly.

• Select Filter > Render > Lens Flare. The most realistic looking flare for our purpose will be 105mm prime. Then take and center the effect on each fog light. Here are my settings for you to copy and my end result so far :
  
  
  
  
  You will notice some stray lighting effects on top of the car. I've opted to leave mine, but you can always erase what you don't like. I think it gives it a photographed type of look and feel.
  
  
• Next we'll add a texture to make our image less than perfect. (You are more than free to leave it as if you want this type of look) Select Filter > Texture > Texturizer. To get the same look as mine, you'll want to use the canvas texture with the following settings :

And that wraps up Part I of this multi-part Photoshop tutorial. The next part will be posted very soon (in the next day or so), and in it we'll tackle adding some eyes and applying our own brands (including sponsor stickers). In the meantime - feel free to post any comments.