Single Exposure VW Golf Light Painted

[TheRaven]

No it's very true. Basically what I'm aiming for is to not have to do 5-10 shots lighting different areas up, I want to do one long single exposure, light it all and done.

However, I do shoot in Raw so I can layer it, one for the background and one for the car. It will still be a single exposure!

[Winso]

To be honest I prefer the original version! BW looks cool but like DubFan said, it doesn't really look like a night shot any more.

I think the original is easily saveable though. I'm at work at the moment so I can't play in photoshop, but basically the exposure is pretty perfect and that's the hard bit to get right.

Personally I'd just darken the sky , probably with a 'multiply' adjustment layer and a graduated layer mask so you leave the car alone. Possibly desaturate a bit too, or maybe actually saturate it more!. For the car I'd just pull all the saturation out of the cyan/blue type area of the spectrum. Dirty and quick but I think on that shot it would work OK. Possibly a quick layers adjustment too, shadows look fine but midtones and highlights might need a little lift on the car.

[Ridg]

I'd go an alternative route, open the image white balanced for the sky.
open a copy of the image balanced for the car, copy paste onto the first image.  change the blending mode to screen or lighten (others might work better).

The long and short is shoot the image right in the first place and you'll save ages in PP.  A couple of gels will save you so much time in PP.