I tried to do a second entry for today's contest, with a ghost sitting on the gravestone, but I just couldn't figure out how to get it to look right:




I was wondering whether anybody here would be willing to put together a tutorial on making believable ghosts. Here's the source on the soldier:



Thanks in advance!

I think a basic problem is: what does a "good" ghost look like??
Anyway, i tried a bit with your pic and got this:



What do you think about this one? Any comments are welcome.... and btw, although i'm not a professional (and probably not supposed to write a tutorial) i can give you the steps how i made it.

quick tut..

- cut out the person

- desaturate

- gassuian blur

- switch blend mode to one of them that makes it look right. i dont remember what i used. overlay maybe? just fiddle till it looks right.

- take down opacity

- have a cigarette

done and done.

heres an entry i did for a contest once

cool PM thank you!! (nice image 2)

These are so great. Thanks, you guys!

I would love to see more people's ghosts. I think where I went wrong was with the green outer glow thing.

Come to think of it, though, some dripping green ectoplasm could make that effect work. Hmm.

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Here's a very basic ghost I added to a photo that I took of my local photo-lab and submitted it anonymously through their self-service terminal to mess with their minds.

Cynn, one of the problems I see with your attempt is the background contrast. Trying to superimpose a see-through image over both light and dark background areas is probably an impossibility. What would work against the dark doesn't work against the light and vice-verse. Also, the busier the visible background the more it will fight with the see-through image on top.

Fugue, I love your sense of humor!

Al, you are right! I tried Polish (Pete?)'s method, on my ghost, and it didn't look right, either. It's because the face overlays the very contrasty draped flag. Dunno's approach of positioning the ghost off-center is a better approach, but still encounters the same problem. Dark tombstone, light background.

Thanks for the insight!

Cynn:

Try softening the edges around your ghost. (Kind of what you did to the white glow around him.) Doesn't matter if you lose some of the ghost's image. I duplicated the ghost layer and filled the pixels with white. By playing with the opacity on these two layers, I think you can get something close to what you are looking for without dripping green ectoplasm!

Wish I could show you the results, but don't have a clue as to how to do that!

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I agree.

OK...here is my attempt at creating a ghost.


I guess it depends on what kind of ghost you are looking for...

I like dunno's one best... so far

I worked further on the pics to find a workaround for the dark/bright issue.... 'pimp my ghost'
starting off with the basic ghost i had, it took me still quite some steps, but what i basically did was:

- create the basic ghost of your choice (make sure it looks good on a dark background; my way to do you can find here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v725/dunno007/ghost.jpg)
- make only the background layer visible
- Select -> Color Range -> pick a white from the flag with fuzzy ~40 and apply (selection is visible)
- go on the soldiers/ghosts layer (so that it is visible) -> Image -> Adjustments -> Equalize (selected area only)
- do step 1 to 3 a second time with the red from the flag
- set the layer blending of the ghost to Luminosity with a Fill of ~38%
- adjust the brightness of the ghost to something nice (i made it fully +100)

... i got this:



i gave also a similar treatment to my first attempt (with a color pick from the light background then), and it seems also a bit more 'consistent' to me:



so, maybe its not impossible, Al ...anyway, i'm still not sure how a ghost is supposed to look like... never saw one

ok here's my try

ghosts are scary...yikes