I recently had to create a mockup of a customized trailer for a marketing piece. This was a piece intended to launch the product line, so the first trailer had yet to be built. All we had was a picture of a similar trailer:

My task was severalfold:

1. Remove the door and put an ATM in its place;
2. Add lettering to the front and side;
3. Change the color while retaining the underlying reflections and texture.

First, I removed the door:

Here’s the final result (the image is a little forced on screen, as the colors and saturation were adjusted for print):

Removing the door involved careful use of the Clone Stamp tool, both to make it seamless and to replicate the rivet lines.

To add the ATM, I used a picture with a somewhat similar perspective and adjusted it to match using the Vanishing Point filter. Then I threw on a subtle drop shadow oriented to match the prevailing lighting.

For the color, I drew a path, knocked out a hole for the sticker in the bottom right, and filled it with orange. I gave the layer a Soft Light blending option so the underlying rivets, texture and reflections would show through. Then I replicated the layer four or five times to get a deep enough orange.

For the type, I combined the previous two techniques. I rasterized the type layers, then used the Vanishing Point filter to match perspective.

I couldn’t just apply a Soft Light blend to the rasterized type, because it would blend with the orange background instead of giving me the mostly white color I was looking for. Further, I wanted the letters to reflect a little less than the orange background.

So with the magic wand I selected the type outline, and used that to copy the underlying part of the original picture and move it to its own layer, which I inverted using Image->Adjustments->Invert. That gave me a non-orange background for the type. I then gave the type layer a Soft Light blending option and duplicated it several times. That gave the white lettering a slightly different hint of the underlying texture.

I’m pretty happy with the result. The technique of using multiple layers of color lets you build up some pretty dense tones while allowing a lot of texture to shine through.