Transparent Screens - A HowTo
3/25/2005 – 2:15 pm
The first thing to make sure of is that you have good consistent light. This is very important and helps down in the final steps of the process. To make it the easiest, you also should use a tripod. Once you choose the setup, DON’T MOVE ANYTHING!
| Step 1: Take a picture of the area with the monitor removed. In this case, I am using my LCD of my laptop so it is convenient to just shut the lid. |  |
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| Step 2: Replace the device that will have the transparency. In my case, again, it is my laptop LCD so I just opened the lid being very careful not to move it or any of the cords around it. |  |
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| Step 3: I used photoshop to accomplish the next task. I am sure that there are any number of other tools that can be used to accomplish this. Laying the image of the open laptop over the image of the closed one, I made a selection of the screen. Once that is made, I copied it out and pasted it into a new document that is the same size of my desktop. |  |
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Step 4: Distort the copied image to make it fit exactly the same dimensions of the desktop. It helps to do a rotation of one of the sides and move it into place correctly so you have at least one corner correct to start. Then use distort to move the rest of the corners to get it in place. This will look distorted looking at it as it sits on the desktop, but when you look through the camera, the perspective will be right. |
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| Step 5: Color correct. This is where good lighting will help. The better the light, the less color correction necessary. As you can see from my example, I did a lot of correction, but it still doesn’t look quite right. This is the most difficult step. As is, it makes it look like a lense instead of truly transparent. As seen in the next image. |  |
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| Step 6: Make the image your desktop image and then snap a photo from the camera, still in the same place as it was for the original pictures. | ![](http://www.anamosa.com/family/james/ljournal/TransparentHowTo/Step6.jpg") |
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| This movie shows the distortion involved and helps dispell the illusion.
I include this for purposes of showing why the image needs to look distorted |
If the movie doesn’t show, you can Download it here. |
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| Have fun making your own transparnt illusions! | ||
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