How to Photograph a Ghost

How to Photograph a Ghost using free image editing software

As it’s halloween night tonight, and I have been requested to publish more image editing video tutorials using the Seashore free image editor for Mac, here’s the latest lesson in the series, which should be a lot of fun. It’s called “How to Photograph a Ghost” and will enable you to produce a well executed picture of a ghostly transparent human body against a real background without any noticable edges and even with the perfect shadow effects. As this is tutorial number 4 in a series, following on from :-

1. Image Editing – Layers
2. Image Editing – the clone tool
3. Image Editing – Colour Select

… we do use some slightly more advanced techniques then in the first three image editing with Seashore for Mac videos, but nothing that the beginner cannot master with just a short amount of practice. You can’t use an existing photograph, you’ll either have to go out and take a picture specially in one place, twice, or else you can download and use the two creative commons licensed photographs used as an example in the video.

Image Editing Video Tutorial – Seashore for Mac 4

So first watch the video all the way through, then decide on your subject matter:

After watching the video once, you can wind back to the beginning and try copying the same technique yourself using the seashore software. The best thing would be to go out and shoot a similar pair of your own photographs, being careful to hold the same camera position for both.

If you do decide to use the example pictures to practice on, you can download them by cmd+clicking the following two thumbnail pictures then selecting “save target as” or else clicking through to the larger pictures then dragging them off to your desktop.

Background Picture

Man against Background

Image editing Photo Credits

You are welcome to these or any of my photographs for online publication provided you abide by the create commons license which require you to attribute the photographer as “Andy Roberts” and link back to this blog.

If you found this free video tutorial useful, it would be nice if you would please rate and favourite the image editing tutorial 4 on youtube and blog,  retweet stumble etc this post,

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2009/10/31/how-to-photograph-a-ghost

cheers.

Andy Roberts

Related posts:

1. Seashore Image Editing Tutorial 5 – Tinting
2. Image Editing lesson 2 : The Clone Tool
3. Image Editing Lesson 1 : Layers
4. How to Photograph Birds
5. Image Editing 3 : Colour Select with Seashore for Mac