The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk trying to decide color for truck

I'm trying to decide what color or colors I want for my truck. I've seen examples of some computer program where you can change colors of items to decide what you want, does anyone know if this is available for old trucks? I've looked at the gallery and that's nice but it would be great to have the ability to change colors right on the screen in front of me and compare the results side by side. Would this be something that could be done with photo shop? Dave

Our local Les Schwab tire store has a monitor that has lots of vehicles, including AD truck. You can change the color to almost any single color you want. It is a great tool and I was amazed at how different the truck looked with different colors. This device was what ultimately made my decision on color. For months before that I would change my mind frequently about what I wanted.

I hope you can find something like that in your area.

Chuck

Chuck:
The next time you go by the store, and if you have time, it would sure be helpful if you could check there and see what the name of the system is. I'm sure it can be found in many places.

House of Kolors has a software program where you can change paint colors on a vehicle. They have most of the old trucks on there. Program is very nice, you can make any paint color by mixing colors or just choose one of the available ones. You can do graphics and two tones, pretty much anything you want. It also shows how the color would actually look on a vehicle, with proper reflections and shading, not just a flat color. Program is not free though, $50 a vehicle, or I believe you can buy all vehicles and any future updates for like $250. Photos of vehicles are from car shows, so some of the vehicles like the Advanced Design Suburban are street rodded vehicles which makes it a little harder to get an exact idea on what a fully stock model would look like.

"Photos of vehicles are from car shows, so some of the vehicles like the Advanced Design Suburban are street rodded vehicles which makes it a little harder to get an exact idea on what a fully stock model would look like."
Better than my imagination.

This is something I do with photoshop all the time. You can create or recreate any color you can imagine.

This website is geared towards wheels, but it let's you choose colors on classic cars and trucks.

http://www.newstalgiawheel.com/wheel_visualizer.asp

Dave, thanks for the link to the website which can help one look at different colours, haven't seen anything like this yet, so this is great to assist one's imagination about what a color would look like.

I did similar photoshopping as well as googling every photo I could find. Then I went and bought samples of the finalist colors and painted several flat panels with the color schemes (two tone with a stripe) and held them out in the sun. Once I thought I had made a decision, I bought a model and the actual paint colors and painted it as planned. Then posted the pics here (well, a link to them on photobucket) looking for yet more affirmation that my choice was a good one. It really helped convince me before I pulled the trigger on the paint job.

First take a photo of your truck on a semi cloudy day to avoid extreme highlights. Bring that into Photoshop. In Photoshop create Paths around everything, it is a bit tedious, but if you get everything separated, it will make the next step easier. Use the Hue/Saturation (Under Image > Adjustments) with the "colorize" box checked and you can get some great colors and it keeps the highlights and shadows basically intact. You can use the other tools to lighten, darken, contrast, etc.

Though I find it much easier and fun to look at photo galleries of your truck online and go to car shows.

Good luck.

Thanks for all of the ideas. Dave