Special effects - like a transport beam in Star Trek?

[Bettyboo]

Hi,

This is the last mini project (product photography) for my course and I thought I would something a bit different, well for me anyway!

I have to make up an advert for a male design line and use five products.

I can't use anything in the image that I haven't made or prepared on CS6/Lighroom myself and have been struggling.

Today I saw an advert for something else and thought it was a good idea for my product project.

I have attached a copy of the advert from The Metro today and it shows some mobile phones being 'beamed' into somewhere like the transporter beams from Star Trek etc.

I wondered if anyone could tell me if this is something I might be able to do in CS6 or is it another application please?



I have to complete this task this weekend, as everything has to be handed in on Tuesday.

Anyway assistance or guidance would be very welcome indeed.

Many thanks.

Lynne

[Shadowman]

Search for Light Leaks using an adjustment brush.

[John 2]

Lynne, it's perfectly possible in CS6 BUT unless you know your way around the use of Layers, it's a bit hard to describe in a post.

[Bettyboo]

Thank you to you both John and John. Sorry for the delay in getting back on, got caught up doing assignment homework yesterday, then the day had gone!

Unfortunately, layers are still a complete mystery to me, but I have set aside today to make the images of the last few things for the advert, so will have a look around layers and as you say John I will see if I can find 'Light Leaks'.

But not to worry if not, my fault for leaving it all to the last minute as usual!! But I will come back to this once I have handed my course work in on Tuesday when I will have the time to go through CS6 and Lightroom more slowly and learn more, so I do really appreciated your advice.

Many thanks, take care.

Lynne

[jcuknz]

I hope you will early-on get around to using layers as IMO they are probably the most useful feature in an editor and an editor isn't one if it doesn't have layers. and in particular adjustment layers where you modify the image without touching the original file and can undo errors at any stage of the process rather than 'undo' previous actions in the order you did them.

As for the beam up project I think the answer is in the ability of the editor to adjust the density of any particular layer so you would start with a white beam and reduce it until you can see the item to be beamed up through it in the layer below. Coupled with perhaps a weak erase brush in places. Never done it myself but that is how I would try to do it. With most editing there are numerous ways and everybody has their prefered way.

Long time since I saw Star Trek so my beam might not be quite 'right' and I seem to remember it sparkled so something different than a car wash probably is needed

Here the three stages ....
First I found a shot I took recently while going through a car wash which gave me the white it was horizontal so I rotated it 90 degrees copying mostly just the white which I also blurred a bit. Here it is sitting in the top layer over a lower layer which was flood filled with black ... that is just so we can see the beam.

Next I found a shot of a wind surfer and organised it as a layer [ select all, copy, paste as a new layer over the previous photo One can change the order of layers in the 'stack' so it was moved down to be between the bottom black layer and the beam layer. I use paint Shop Pro so do not know how you do it in CS6 but the ability is similar in doing these things.

We cannot see the surfer and there were black edges to the white which required me to erase with a soft edged erase brush to leave just the white. You can see the grey at the bottom of the beam which should disappear when I reduce the strength of the white ...


Apart from the need to show you the beam there was no need for the black layer at the bottom of the stack so really all we needed was just the 'background layer' of the sufer and a layer above it with the beam. There was a certain amount of preparation involved that I resized each layer to suit a 700x500 pixel image size for here.

Hope this helps .... You Take Care

[jcuknz]

Finally for a bit of fun and to show that you should be able to work on each layer to show the story tou want I have first copied the surfer and with four more layers placed him up the beam. You can 'hide' a layer so you only show the layers you want for an animation sequence and likewise the sail as perhaps it would behave if he continued to hold the lines.

For an animation sequence I would use the burst feature of the camera to organise frames of the water moving inwards. Here I ended up with twelve layers and for the water movement that would add another five plus the movement of the surfer approaching the beam-up point.

It gets horribly complicated and one needs to keep a written log of which layer belongs in the set for each frame ... at least I found I needed to do it for a sequence.

[Bettyboo]

Hi jcuknz,

Sorry for the delay in reply, it was a mad panic towards the end to get everything finished to hand in last night, but it's in!

This is great thanks. Now the course is over, I am going to spend the spare time I have freed up really getting around Lightroom and PS, in particular layers, and I will definitely have a go at doing this and experiment with some fun shots!

I really appreciate yours and everyone time in helping me, thank you.

Lynne

[shreds]

Ok, so its too late for your assignment...sorry, but you could mess around with CS6 layers and then create your 'Star Trek' beam using a layer and CS6 filters and 'Crystalise' to replicate your 'tractor beam' and create a glow around your objects with something as simple as over sharpening.

Place it all on a suitable background, a bit of a merge/flatten and you can 'Beam Me Up Scottie'!

[Bettyboo]

Hi Ian, many thanks for that, I will give it a go and have my Adobe Photoshop CS6 'on Demand' book at the ready to get my head around layers!

Thanks again much appreciated.

Lynne