Pimp My Ride (Exclusive Tutorial)

Almost everyone has seen "Pimp My Ride", the MTV reality show that takes ruined cars and their owners to the "West Coast Customs" shop for a makeover that includes everything from wiring and suspension to wheels, paint, and interiors. Wildly popular, the show comes highly recommended by car enthusiasts and reality show lovers alike. Here's how you can join the fun by recreating the show's logo.

Let's begin. The creation of any logo begins with the choice of the font on which the logo will be based. I reviewed many fonts but found that nothing other than Banana Split would do the job. Download this font and place it on your computer.

In Photoshop, create a new document 280x200px. Choose Type tool and create 3 separate words - "Pimp", "My" and "Ride" - with the following settings: (#f6f623)



For the word "My" set the font size at 42 px.



Next, using the Move tool, you should place the words one above another, as it appears in the TV show. The word "My" should be placed so that the "M" is situated above the letters "P" and "i" in the word "Pimp", leave few pixels between them. The word "Ride" should be placed so that the upper portion of the letter "d" covers a bit of the lower portion of the letter "p" in the word "Pimp".



Select the text layers and merge them (Ctrl+E).

Go to Blending Options and add Stroke with the following settings:





Duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J). Then select lower layer one. Ctrl+Click on it and expand the selected area by 3 pixels (Select>Modify>Expand...). Fill the selected area with blue (#1fa3c9).



Holding Ctrl+Alt, click Down button about 20 times. This will duplicate the content of a layer, moving it one pixel downward each time.


Select all dupicated layers (click the left mouse button on the upper ones, and then holding Shift, click on the lower ones) and convert them into one (Ctrl+E).

In general that's all there is to it. The logo is finished. You can tweak the color gamma. For this Ctrl+Click on the layer with the text or the shadow, and then fill in the selection with your colors or gradient fills.

Now you can this logo to the car.

Open the image of your car in Photoshop.



Then drag the layer with the logo to the image of the car. Using the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T), move the image so that it's situated in the project in close relationship to the car. Then select Blending Mode: Darken and Opacity: 70%



Here's another way to enchance logo. Add the rays to the background, and it will turn out something like this:



For this you need to return to the document with the logo. Then create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and place it under the layer with the logo. Then using the Marquee tool make multiple vertical selections.



Paint the selected area with gradients from #f00183 to # 9c3993. Invert the selected area (Ctrl+Shift+I). Then create a new layer and fill it with a gradient with the same colors but working toward the other side. Deselect (Ctrl+D). Then apply filter Polar Coordinates (Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates>Rectangular to Polar). to both layers with rays.