How to make a car disappear

Scott_Quier · January 1, 2009

In the Mini-Challenge #67, I posted a Photoshop composite photo with me cloned 3 times and my car being transparent. It was cute and mildly funny - some suggested I post it so I did. Since then, I've received a number of requests to explain "How did you do that?"

I didn't know for certain where to post this thread. It is all about how to obtain an image, but there is a very large component of the process that might qualify it for (or force it to be moved to) the "Finishing School" forum. I rolled the dice and I posted it in Techique. So, pathfinder, if I blew it feel free to move it (like you need my permission

).

So, here's the process I used, in a step-by-step sequence...

First, develop the concept. This was the hardest part. I just wanted a "let's clone me" image but that was a little boring as it's been done a number of times. So, I threw in the challenge of a see-through car.
Stage the shot - What building blocks would I need. I wanted a shot of the car. I also needed multiple shots of me standing around the car, looking at it. These are the building blocks. Obviously, these were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod, using the 10-second delay timer so that I could get into the frame. Also, exposure - these were all manual, I didn't want the camera fooled by the slight scene change (as I moved from on position to another) and, thus, changing the exposure on me. I also had to wait until the sun went behind some clouds. Had I not, the shadows cast by the sun would have been quite difficult (for me at least) to deal with. The tricky part was positioning my body "against" the non-existant car. As you will see later, I missed with one image but I fixed that in PS.

The rest of the job is all done in PS.
Background Layer - The image is built from the bottom up, so I needed to decide which image I was going to use for my foundation. A little thought revealed that I had only one choice - it had to be image #4 - so it's going to be on the bottom of the layers stack.
Create your layers stack - Get all your images into one PSD. This is a simple cut and paste job. When you are done, your layers pallet will looks something like this...I've already
Masks are so much fun. The rest of the job was to mask each layer to eliminate those elements that just confused the issue. In doing this, it's easiest if you turn off all but the layer you are working on. The background layer needs no masking.
So, once you have all the layers masked appropriately, your layers pallet should look something like this:

Notice that I've merged the bottom two layers into the background layer and moved a couple of the layers up and down in the stack.
One layer's not right - The top most layer is not in the right position. Basically, I wasn't standing in the right spot for this to look right.

I need to move the top-most layer a bit to the right and darken the bright line along my left leg. With the leg supposed to being right up against the car that pant leg should be a bit darker - no worries.
Make the Car Disappear - All that's left now is to reduce the opacity of the "The Car" layer to taste. The lower the opacity, the less car will show:

BradfordBenn · January 1, 2009

Thanks for sharing.

I am curious for the masking did you use the magic wand, snap polygon or just winged it?

Thanks

Scott_Quier · January 1, 2009

BradfordBenn wrote:

Thanks for sharing.

I am curious for the masking did you use the magic wand, snap polygon or just winged it?

Thanks

On the car for example, the first step is the Magic Lasso. Once you have the selection, I use Quick Mask and/or directly brushing on the mask.

For the multiple images of me, I just use QM - it really doesn't save much time to use anything else because you have to be so careful of all the details anyway.

angevin1 · January 1, 2009

Terrific post Scott! terrific tech!

thanks for sharing!

cheers~tom

BradfordBenn · January 2, 2009

Thanks. I am trying to hone my skills and see if there are other approaches to what have I am doing to see if there are better ways.

leaforte · January 2, 2009

Thanks for sharing. I bet your neighbors chuckle quite often at you.

jeffreaux2 · January 2, 2009

What did you use to grab the screen captures in photoshop?

Scott_Quier · January 2, 2009

jeffreaux2 wrote:

What did you use to grab the screen captures in photoshop?

On a PC you can use the Alt-PrtScn key combination to capture a screen image into the clipboard. Then, in PS, open a new canvas (CTRL-N, you will automatically get a canvas sized for the clipboard contents), paste the clipboard contents, crop to taste (to get rid of the extraneous stuff), save to JPG. Done.

How to make a car disappear

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