Flickr Photoshop Fun – How to Disappear

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by Daniel J. Hogan

I tried out a photo trick last week in honor of Towel Day.  I made most of my body disappear! Learn how I made this picture happen with a bit of Photoshop magic after the break.

Ok, the trick here is that you need to have your camera on a tripod and consistent lighting.

Step 1: Find a simple background. My boring closet doors did the trick.

Step 2: Figure out your lighting. I just used the available lighting from my nearby floor lamp. Like taking your cousin to the prom, it wasn’t ideal, but hey, it better than nothing.

Step 4 3: Put your camera on a tripod.  Compose your shot. Lock your tripod down. This took some trial and error because I had to use a timer to photo myself. Had I been taking a picture of someone else, this would have been easier.

Step 4: Take a picture of the background.

Ta-da! Here is my lovely, boring background, sans Yours Truly. Again, I used the timer. I wanted to prevent camera shake (which shouldn’t happen on a tripod, but you never know).

Step 5: Everybody Walk the Dinosaur Take a picture of yourself or your subject.

Step 5: Dump both photos into Photoshop and layer them on top of each other. You have to make sure both of the images are lined up how you want them to appear in the final version. Put the ‘background’ image as your bottom layer.

Step 6: M.A.S.K.! Not to be confused with the cartoon, but yes, you need to use a Mask (not Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) to make this trick work. Apply a vector mask to the image you want to disappear, in my case the top layer with me and the towel. Use the Add Vector Mask button on the bottom of the layer palette.

Step 7: Start painting! When using a mask, anything you paint black disappears and anything you paint white, comes back.  This is actually better than erasing, because if you mess something up, you can just repaint it back on. You may want to change the Hardness on your paint brush so that the edges are not so rough. Work in small sections at a time. Make sure the Mask portion of the layer is selected in the layer palette (the black and white image). I used my WACOM tablet and it is very handy for this sort of thing.

And that’s it! Take the time to make sure your edges are clean, but most importantly, have fun. This is an easy procedure, but it is very versatile (note: this does lead to large file sizes). You can use it for way more than just making your head float.