Making a Transparent Screen

A transparent screen is an optical illusion like this one where the screen looks like you can see right through it. The fun part is doing this entirely without Photoshop. Its easy too just take one picture with a laptop's screen closed and another one with the screen open, and then just paste the background on top of the screen in Photoshop. Here is how you go about doing it Photoshop free (well actually you do use Photoshop a little…): first set up the laptop (or desktop or iPod or whatever you are using) how you want it and set up your camera where you want it. Its much easier with a tripod. I've never even tried without. Anyway, then you close the laptop's screen and a take a picture. Then open the screen at the angle you want it and take another picture. Be sure you don't move the laptop or camera at all from now on. Next you import both pictures. Open the one with the laptop screen closed in Photoshop. Then open the second one and paste it on top as a layer and set the transparency to about 50%. Select the laptop's screen with the Polygonal Lasso, delete the layer with the laptop screen open and crop the selection. If you didn't take the picture from straight on, then what you have left isn't rectangular. I prefer to stretch it out in the latest version of GraphicConverter. Save the picture as a Photoshop file and open it in GraphicConverter. Select Unscew from the picture or effect menu, I can't remember which and select the part of your image that you just cropped out in Photoshop. Scale the picture to your display resolution. Now just display this picture full screen and take another picture on the camera and it should line up so the screen looks transparent. The hard part is getting the color right. Depending on the lighting you may need to tweak the color of the picture on screen. Dimming the display can also help. Changing it to black & white makes it easy too. Thats it! Hopefully you'll be able to make a transparent screen how.

Thats how you make a normal transparent screen without any special effects. There are also other things you can do like stick your hand through the screen like I did here (still without Photoshop). Here is how you do that: the first thing to do differently is when you take the picture that goes on screen your hand needs to be in it. It makes things easier later on if you pull up your sleeve so it doesn't show. Then before you take the final shot you hold your sleeve in front of the screen so it looks like your hand on screen is coming out of you sleeve. Just pull your real hand up your sleeve so it doesn't show. It can be hard to hold your sleeve in the right place if you can't see the camera screen, though. For mine I held a mirror behind the camera. That makes it loads easier.

By the way, make sure you check out the Transparent Screens group on Flickr to see tons more transparent screens.

Thats it: a short guide to making transparent screens. Good luck! And if you have any questions please post a comment.