How do you get tires looking good on the ground?

[Keiger]

So I did a ReMask on a bike and put it on a rock surface. I added a shadow to it , but how do you get it looking like it is on the rock?

[Harry]

Can you show us?

[Keiger]

Here you go Harry. I kind of erased part of the rear tire before I noticed it was gone and lost it when I saved the image.

[MikeR]

To pull this off, the tire and the shadow need to touch. The gap between makes it look like he's in the air.

[Keiger]

To pull this off, the tire and the shadow need to touch. The gap between makes it look like he's in the air.

So how do you make that bad boy get there, I messed with it quite a bit and just could not get it to look right.??

[VinnieP670]

have you tried the transform or free transform tool? or if you have CS3 or 4 extended, you could convert the bike to a 3d layer then add the shadow after you have the bike correctly placed

[Harry]

OK
The major problem is that the shadows do not match!
If the light is coming from the right, why doesn't the big rock leave a similar shadow!
In fact the light looks as though it is almost directly overhead!

The clouds don't look right either, with that amount of sunlight coming from straight above,
one would expect to see an almost washed out pale blue sky.

[Keiger]

have you tried the transform or free transform tool? or if you have CS3 or 4 extended, you could convert the bike to a 3d layer then add the shadow after you have the bike correctly placed

Vinnie, I am running CS4 only. I put a drop shadow on the bike, then made thedrop shadow its own layer and free transformed it down on to the ground. I was having a hard time with the shadow when in free transform it was hopping all over the place. When I was able to get the shadow under the front tire the shadow looked off the ground too. Is there and easier way to work with shadows? How do you make it flow over the ground right?

Harry your right that shadow on the rider should be more back. I shot the picture of the rock with the sun at my back and behind my right shoulder, was having a hard time keeping my own shadow out of the frame. A polarizer does wonders for sky and clouds.
But how do you make the tires blend in with the surrounding surfaces, how do you blend in a layer lik that?
Thanks for the help, Keig
Note: The only thing done in this pic was the rider was ReMasked and layered on and nothing else was done.

[bonnieg1]

Did you try using the perspective tool on shadow or bike? Might be worth a try. Great pic anyway!

[Harry]

I don't know if you are aware of this (not many people are!!)
If you use the effects settings on a layer and create a drop shadow for a selected object in Photoshop,
you can right click on the effect itself on the layer and create a new object from the shadow!
this can be very useful for changing the shape and opacity of the shadow.

If you want to blend the tyres in more convincingly, you need the shadow right on the bottom of the tyre
and much darker where it meets the rock, so it is indistinguishable from the tyre in fact.