The making of ‘Beam me up Scotty’.

NOTE: I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements to make this image. If you’re using a proper version of Photoshop, things will be slightly different.

In this tutorial you will use displacement mapping similar to the Matrix tutorial (even using the same texture). You’ll also see some of the things you need to think about to amke an image look more realistic.

The first thing to do is to get a photo of someone in an appropriate pose (I used a picture of me ).

Do a Google image search for Star Trek’s transporter, to get a feel for what it looks like when someone is beaming up. In this image you can see there is something that looks like writing scrolling up them, as well as some vertical lines. From the show, I also seem to remember a blue beam, so I’ll add that in as well.

First, we want to define where our beam will go. Use the rectangular selection tool (also called the ‘marquee’ or ‘rectangular marquee’ tool) to select a box like so:

Then, use the elliptical marquee tool in ‘add’ mode (if you don’t know what that is, press F1) to add a round bottom to the rectangle as shown.

Make a new layer and fill the selection with a blue colour. I used #00CCFF (HSB: 192, 100, 100; RGB: 0, 204, 255). Set the layer opacity to 35%.

You’ll notice that this doesn’t look very good. For things that are supposed to look like lights, the ’screen’ and ‘dodge’ blend modes tend to work quite well. I used ’screen’.

Now for the wierd blobs/text. This part is similar to the Matrix tutorial I made earlier. First, get an image to use. I used the same image as I did before. To make it the right colour, go Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue/Saturation (I think this is different in a proper version of Photoshop). Check the box marked ‘Colorize’ (damned crazy American spelling) and use the same hue and saturation values as you did with the beam (I used Hue: 192 and Sat: 100).

Make sure your .psd file is saved. Then, paste the image of code into your photoshop document on a new layer and position over the person. DON’T SAVE.

Go Filter>Distort>Displace and use the default settings. When it asks what image to use as the displacement map, use your previously saved document (I think there is a bug in Elements. This only seems to work when the documentis saved in the ‘My Pictures’ folder.)

Here I must emphasise the importance of PLAYING AROUND. I found the distort filter didn’t give the result I wanted. However, I found that if I inverted the colours of the background image, applyed the filter, and re-inverted them I got a better effect.

Also, you’ll need to play around with scale of the displacment depending on the contrast of the image.

Next, set the blend mode to ’screen’. This makes all of the black parts transparent.

Use the polygonal lasso tool to cut out the unwanted portions so that you are left with this:

Almost done! Next is the vertical lines. Make a new layer, fill with black and go Noise>Add Noise. Check ‘Monochromatic’ and ‘Gaussian’ and drag the slider to about 50. Click OK and go Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Set the distance to 900 and the angle to 90°.

Hmmmm. Kinda faint. To increase the contrast go Enhance>Brightness/Contrast>Levels. Drag the two outside sliders inwards until you are happy. You might also want to sharpen it (Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen).

Set the blend mode to ’screen’. Erase everywhere you don’t want lines. Colourise it (just like before) and you should be left with this (I’ve made all other layers invisible):

And with all other layers visible:

You could leave it at this, but people might not ‘get’ what’s going on in the picture. To make sure people ‘get’ the Star Trek connection, I’m going to add the Starship Enterprise to the picture, in the deliberately empty patch of sky.

First, find an image of the Enterprise. Paste it on a new layer into your image and position it how you like. Use the polygonal lasso tool to cut it out.

However, it doesn’t look right. Why? Well, when you look at, say, a distant mountain, you’ll notice that the shadows are not quite black (or even dark grey), but pale blue. This is because of atmospheric scattering. It’s also the reaseon the moon in the daytime is not half white, half black. To make it look real, we will have to lighten up the shadows. This can easily be achieved with the levels editor (Enhance>Adjust Brightness/Contrast>Levels, and drag the left slider inward).

Done!

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• JoJo in the Stars
• Approaching Deadline
• Scotty Needs a Map

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