How do I create this effect....but better?

[mcleish]

Hey everyone. Happy New Year!!
Ive been racking my brains all day and i can't figure out how to create this effect. Basically, what I'm trying to do is, create a panoramic scene with x amount of photos but with deliberate ghosting. I took 6 photographs of a tennis player returning a tennis serve (as an experiment) and then merged them together using CS 5.1. I then turned down the opacity on each layer to try and create the effect. Now on the right hand side i wanted to mask out 5 of the 6 lines person and leave 1 so that there wouldn't be any ghosting there (If you understand what i mean). Now as you can see it hasn't gone too well. Im not much of a PS wizard so any help would deeply appreciated.

What I'm looking for at the end of this 'little project', is to go to the main tennis arena...Create a panoramic photo of the whole stadium (and mask all the layers of the crowd apart from one so that there isn't any blurring/ghosting) and then get a ghosting/motion blur of the tennis players playing a point. In my head it looks awesome...I just hope you guys can visualise what I'm going for.


Untitled_Panorama1 by mcleishlad, on Flickr

Thanks for looking guys and i hope you can solve my problem.

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[Schwettylens]

I just think you need to do a better job deleting stuff on the other layers. The layer at the bottom should be the scene of the player where you want it sharp without ghosting at all. So you souldnt be able to see the girl in the back with red shirt behind him.


As far as panoramic view with this effect I would take bunch of frames from side to side (i would use portrait orientation) with MANUAL focus and MANUAL exposure. Once you finish shooting side by side, center the tennis players and shoot burst mode. I would then stitch the panorama first, then work with the ghosting effect with the burst mode shots.

[480sparky]

Here ya go.

[KmH]

Using Bridge or Lightroom you can open all your images in Photoshop as layers if they are all in the same folder.

Open the folder of images. Go under Edit > Select all. Then go under Tools > Photoshop > and select 'Load files into Photoshop layers'.

[mcleish]

Thanks for the quick responses guys.

@schwettylens - Taking the photos won't be a problem i don't think. I always shoot Manual but thanks for the tip on focusing manually too. Thats the Brenizer method isn't it? So after I've stitched all the arena photos together, how would i go about adding the court photos afterwards? Do i not do this in one process?

480sparky - Thanks for the link. Its helped me out trying it again.

KmH - Ive gone for photomerge again so that all the photos are aligned and then used 1 photo as a base. Then I've masked out the players in the other layers individually and then messed with the opacity again. Thanks for the tips.

So I've given it another go.... Am i getting closer? Im not looking for this actual photo to look good...Im just trying to get the 'technique' right.

Thanks again.
Untitled_Panorama1 by mcleishlad, on Flickr

[Arturos]

Hi mcleish,

Nice work, I would say you are going in the right direction. Have a look at my thoughts, maybe you will find them useful!

On your photo, you have 5 images of the same guy with different poses, 4 of which are opaque and one is not. The movement starts with the non-transparent character (right side) and turns instantly into the semi-transparent version.

I think in order to show the movement, it should be other way round. Basically the first character (right one) should be the most opaque while the last one (left side) should be fully visible. Also, the opacity should be increased gradually, i.e. the closer the player is to his final action, the sharper he should look.

Secondly, start adding motion blur filter to see how it looks. Each of the frames should have different intensity of the blur, with the first, most opaque character (on the right) being much more blurred than the last one (on the left), which should be neither blurred nor opaque.

In other words, the first act in motion should be the most blurred and the least visible, while the last act should be the most visible and the least blurred.

Finally, in order to make the movement look more natural, you should consider adding couple more versions of the character, as the path which the tennis racket is following doesn’t look too natural (too big differences from one state to another).

Hope it helps, and let us know the outcome!

[mcleish]

Thanks for the Advice Arturos, I like the ideas you have passed on and i definitely think it would make it better.
Unfortunately the main 'event' didn't go to plan. I managed to make a panoramic photo from the main area which i really like the outcome of but i was unable to take the photos of the players. I will try and upload the pano soon to see what you think, but the file size is pretty big.
Thanks again mate.