Client sent us an image of a truck that a photographer took a while back — it's already been (poorly) retouched by someone else at either their prior agency or the photographer himself. I need to prep it for compositing. This means, I will want nice reflections. As you can see by the image, whomever retouched it, decided to be sloppy with their brushing and they simply painted over important parts of the truck, reflections and others.

I can fix the small stuff with simple cloning/healing with some brushing here and there but I'm curious as to how I should go about making reflections for this.

Any suggestions? This is time sensitive. The client needs the file done soon.

Base image here

Well looks like a studio background , i think it should look similiar to these two :
http://www.netcarshow.com/lamborghini/2008-estoque_concept/1600x1200/wallpaper_04.htm

http://www.netcarshow.com/lamborghini/2010-reventon_roadster/1600x1200/wallpaper_05.htm

You can use burn tool to make some parts of the truck darker , add white refs on the windows and body parts that are lightened (like on the images above) , and maybe you can add some refs from lights on the ceiling of the building , that the car's in , or from a window , if you want to be a bit creative ... Ofcourse it's far more difficult i tihnk Something like that:
http://www.netcarshow.com/ford/2006-iosis_concept/1600x1200/wallpaper_01.htm

Good luck!

Yeah it was definitely shot in a studio. I need to place it into an actual environment so I'll need to make it look as if it is in this environment.

I guess I should find a reference of a truck/car in a similar setting?

A good picture in same angle is what you need ( Car on it should be in the same positon as the truck , and it should be good quality and big in size

Yup. look up netcarshow.net and look for trucks at a similar angle.

Adding reflections to a car in a studio is the most time consuming laborious and painful task
It usually requires a full repaint/rebrush to look convincing, and yeh, this is hard to achieve.

If the client wants it in it's environment, then he should get a photo taken in its environment - can't be that hard can it?

I 100% agree that shooting the trucks on location is the best thing to do.

Shooting on location would be my suggestion if it made sense financially for the client. We're in South Florida (as is the client) and our locations for shoots are a lot more limited.

We'll be compositing the trucks into environments like farms, mountain-scapes, lakeside scenes etc., — places that you'd see more in the Northwest United States.

Flying the team out there, delivering the trucks, securing permits for the locations...if we had the budget. That would be nice.

Well, any sort of outdoor scene is preferable, find a reasonably large open space to take decent shots, then it's really easy to shop in a farm or mountain scene behind the vehicle.

You can usually get away with this as long as there is roughly the same lighting, and it's a popular technique among photoshoppers, adding a different backdrop.

Something like this for example:
http://img.modifiedcars.com/c/h/50/19652_19240.jpg
Could easily have a whole range of different skylines added in, which would create a very different effect.

If you're wanting it on a specific ground surface, then I'm also sure you'd find something suitable, whether it be gravel or rocks or sand, in your local area, even if the surround scenery isn't ideal

Agree with you 100%. Wish I could convince others to get on board with that method.