Feature: Add Sci-Fi Special Effects
When I was in college, I took my geeky love of Star Trek, added a dose of photography, and came up with a hobby that could pretty much only be done around 3:00 a.m. Although it didn't help my grades, it was a lot of fun to create special-effect photos of my roommates shooting and disintegrating each other with phasers. Back then, I did all of those cool effects "in the lens," using flashlights, very long exposures, and a healthy dose of luck.
As you might expect, the results were more amateurish than what we can achieve today. Check out this vintage 1985 photo, for instance, featuring two of my college roommates. These days, we can get similar--but far better--effects in an image editor. Follow along, and I'll show you how you can make kids or coworkers the stars of a sci-fi special effects shot.
Disintegrate Your Subject
You'll need to start with a photo that poses two people in a scene like the image above. You can coax two of your coworkers into helping you, or download and load this photo into your favorite image editor (I'm using Corel's Paint Shop Pro 9). Once the photo's in your image editor, immediately copy it to the clipboard by choosing Edit, Copy from the menu. We'll leave it there for the rest of the procedure.
Note: To keep the photo in memory, you must not copy anything else until you are ready to use the stored image. If you are worried that you might use the clipboard and lose the copied image, then you can save it with a different file name. Later, when I ask you to paste the image back into the project, load that version and copy it to the clipboard then.
Our next order of business is to make our unfortunate target disintegrate. As a first step toward making him glow with phaser energy, carefully create a selection region. Start by clicking the Freehand Selection tool, which lives in the fifth cubby from the top of the toolbar. If the Tool Options palette isn't visible at the top of the screen, toggle it on by choosing View, Palettes, Tool Options. In the Tool Options palette, set the Selection type to Edge Seeker and set Feather to zero. Now zoom in far enough that the subject fills the screen (you can roll your mouse wheel to zoom in and out) and click your way around him in short, careful sections, outlining as you go. When you work your way back to your starting point, double-click to close the selection.
Next, we need to make the selection bigger than the subject's body. To do that, choose Selections, Modify, Expand, and set it to about 8 pixels. The bigger your picture, the more pixels you'll need to create a proportionate halo effect. You can click the Auto Proof button in the Expand Selection dialog box to see the effect of the number of pixels in the original image. (Auto Proof is the icon that looks like an eye with small padlock.) When you're happy with the result, click OK.
Next, feather the selection in the same way--choose Selections, Modify, Feather and set the feathering to about 10 pixels.
Now for the moment you've been waiting for: It's time to add some glow. Choose Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Brightness/Contrast and jack the brightness all the way up to maximum. Click OK, and you should see a pure white region where the subject used to be.
Next, add the copy we saved earlier as a new layer into your image. (Or load the saved image and choose Edit, Copy.) Choose Edit, Paste As New Layer. The glow should disappear because the copy of the original, unretouched image is now on top.
Double-click on the top layer to open the Layers Properties dialog box; if you don't see the Layers palette on the right side of the screen, toggle it on by choosing View, Palettes, Layers. Then change the layer's opacity until you get the effect you like--it'll probably be in the neighborhood of 20 to 40 percent.
Add a Phaser Blast
We've now made a pretty convincing disintegration scene, but what about the phaser beam? This is a lot easier to create on the PC than it was to mock up back in 1985, since most paint programs let you draw a perfectly straight line by holding down the Shift key.
In Paint Shop Pro, start by removing the selection: Choose Selections, Select None and then click on the bottom or background layer in the Layers palette. Next, click on the Paint Brush icon in the tool palette's seventh cubby from the top. Check the brush size in the Tool Options palette; I used a size of 20. Position the paint brush where you want the beam to start, then click and release.
If your beam color is not white, select Edit, Undo Paint Brush, then select Swatches (under the Materials heading in the Layers palette) and click on the white swatch. Redo the initial paint brush step and continue.
Hold down Shift and click on the end point. The program draws a perfectly straight line between the two points. Here's my final version of the photo.
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