I love to make wild, out-of-this-world illustrations in Photoshop, and there's no better month to go crazy doing that than in October! I had an assignment to create an image for a story on haunting enthusiasts and ghost hunters who travel to haunted hotels to try to catch a glimpse of a trapped spirit. Before I visualized what I'd do in the photo, I pinned down the title idea of "Sleeping with the Ghost" as a play on the movie drama "Sleeping With the Enemy." That inspired a vision of a man in a hotel bed awakening to see some poltergeist about to grab him:
The story is featured here: Haunted Businesses - AOL Money & Finance
Here's how I made the image:
1) I took a picture of an environment I wanted with "real" subjects.
2) I took a separate photo of my "ghost" with a clean background. In this instance, my ghost was just going to be a hand grabbing, so I took a separate photo of an arm and hand against a white background.
In order to create my dramatic photo, I had to work in layers in Photoshop. Over the years I have created many illustrations with ghosts and have come up with my own formula using layers.
3) In Photoshop, I cut out my ghost's arm, then pasted it into my "real" environmental shot as the top layer. (It's very important to note that the best way to do a cut-out is with the Polygonal Lasso Tool with the settling on a feather of about 2 pixels.)
4) Now the fun really begins. Making a ghost requires making an object be slightly invisible, smoky, and downright eerie. It is quite an art and it takes patience. I personally go through an ever-changing mix of techniques that includes:
- selective color
- opacity levels
- eraser
- liquidation
- blur tool
- paint tool
Every picture needs a different ghastly direction, so it really pays off to play around in Photoshop with the various blend modes and filters available so your ghost shows up best.
Enjoy creating! (And take a look at a couple of my other eerie ideas below.)
Some other fun Halloween stuff: Halloween 2006 | Haunted Houses
- Cassandra
14 comments:
Oh cool techniques. I have to try to create a few. You might be interested in our Journal's Halloween Contest we started. http://journals.aol.com/rap4143/MyDayMyInterests/entries/2006/10/20/halloween-photo-contest-entries/1678
Betty
very nice i have never used photoshop i use JASC PaintShopPro but from yuor instructions they sound very simmialr in the steps you have to gothrough to get the final result
Wow this is very fun! I'm inspired! -Jackie
Hey! These photo-illustrations look familiar! Hmmm...
Love the ghosts! And great photoshop tips!
Just making a quick comment about how awesome the photos are or something.
That guy in the bed is simply too scary but other than that pretty cool.
Great information but would love to see a step-by-step process on how you created the final image. You know, how much blurring, color correcting, etc was done from beginning to end, even on the "real" photo you'd started with.
I'm looking forward to this series!
Great job! Hope The guy in the first pic made it out alive. lol
Whoa! That first one freaks me out! Sure glad I'm not that dude!
Photographyed,
I love the first photo! I should say I like all three, but the second and third seemed a little overkill. Then again, if you look at the early 'ghost photos' of the late 19th & early 20th centuries, they weren't really into subtlety either. The table lamp in the third is what bothers me most. The porportion seems wrong.
In the end, it's all a matter of you using creativity with Photoshop. Fun Fakery!
As the the person who suggested seeing all the steps: it might have been interesting to see the arm as originally photographed, to try to figure out how he/she stretched it into the clawed phantom arm, but like a magician, Photographyd shouldn't have to reveal his/her methods sytematically. Photoshop (or any image altering program) is all about experimentation.
I totally love all the illustrations. I'm a dunce when it comes to computer stuff so this is all amazing me.
hey, thanks for the photo tips. Will try to create a ghost image. Better my creation than the real thing.
very cool! love the x-ray looking hand!
All the pictures were great but I especially liked the first one. Very creative and the "Sleeping with the Ghost" is very creative.
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