Im trying to create an Image where my figure has a ghost effect the techniqe I ussed was took 3 seprate renders One of my scene without the figure, then one with only my figure, and a third of the rose prop only, I saved them in tif format then opened them in psp7 and ps7 both gave me the same results, anyways I then deleted the background of my figure who I wanted to be ghosted, and also did the same for the rose prop then added them over the background scene I created. The results is not what I expected as you will see she ends up with her legs infront of the the tombstone when she should be positioned slightly behine the following image is of the ghost image and in the next post will be of a reneder version before postwork to display how the positioning should look. if anyone can help get the effect im looking for it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the postion im trying to get this was just renedered before I did my post work

i would use the alpha of the figure as selection then fether the edges of it, so you get more trasparency on the edges and less inside of the figure. i'm working with photoshop but i'm sure there is a similar action in paint shop pro. also, try the figure adding light to the background, don't just compose it over...

Im not to sure what you mean what Im trying to do is have the position of the girl the same as in the second image just make her a little transparent and I believed I made it alpha image when I selected the background and deleted it from the tif image maybe Not if you can explain a little more it might help me better understand...thanks Dark Raven

lol, that's what you got when you're working and reading posts at the same time. what i meant is that you try to smooth the edges of your alpha channel, so that on the borders you get more transparency and going toward middle less. as if your figure has "thickness", so that, say, her belly is less transparent then her hands. the other thing is to try and duplicate your layer with the figure. one layer should only lighten the background layer and the other will contain the actual drawing. thus you can also add some "blurrines" to your figure if you soften one layer and the add it to the others.

Just curious: Why are you doing a separate render for the rose? Unless you want its opacity different than the girl's, there's no reason to do that (unless I'm missing something) Anyway, the way I understand it, your only trouble is getting her legs behind the tombstone? Here's a couple of easy ways: 1) when she's at the lower opacity, erase the part of her legs that shouldn't show. 2) render the tomstone separately and paste it in after you bring her in. Tip: when your dragging your character (or alpha selection) from one document to another, hold down the SHIFT key. This will force the item into the exact center of the target document. So if the source and target are the same size, you'll get exact positioning of the target over the source. Hope I explained that right.

Thanks guys for the advice, yes the rose is not suppose to be transparent cause its a undead object so to speak..lol anyways I think i figured out my problem the graveyard is a complete prop so there is now way to select it and delete unessary parts and it kinda of has to be the focal part of the image and if I put its layer first it completely blocks out the figure, so what im trying to do now is go back into poser and adjust the transparncy of the figure and her parts it working actually better then trying to do it the way I have been except for when i get to her face, her tongue teeth, eyes, ect still pop through making her unattractive and something you rather see stay in the grave rather then come back out anyways Im going to try that and a few other tricks I discover but thanks for your advice and let me know if you have anymore Ideas Dark Raven

Given the graveyard scene is one prop, there are other ways to do it, but they're more complicated and I just woke up. Even so, my suggestion #1 above would still work fine. I'd zoom in on the area and use the straight lasso tool to select the legs and delete 'em.

Attached Link: BJ Glass Technique

If you are doing the transparency in Poser, just make sure the eyes, teeth, etc. are set so they are completely transparent (not partially) so they don't show when they are rendered and don't give that peculiar view inside the head (in other words, you have to set their transparency separately from the rest of the body that is less transparent). BJ Shaven has an excellent tutorial on transparent figures at which can be adjusted for various degress of transparency to get the effect you want (I've done a couple transparent figures....one less solid than the other and it works very well). You don't need to apply the transparency to the rose at all. Of course I did mine in Poser 4. I'm clueless how to get any effect to work in Poser 5.

If I was going to do this in Poser 4, I would render the scene, but without the girl - but leave the rose where it is. Import the render as a background image, add the girl, and hide everything else in the scene but the rose and the tombstone and mound of earth in front of her. I would then turn depthcueing on and render the scene again. The girl should render semi-transparent, and the rose and tombstone, and mound of earth should come out solid like you want them.

Okay guys this seems to be better I did the transparnecy in poser im not sure if the part around her chin and right cheek bone is just a light effect or what, Let me know what you think and what type of post work I can do to make this image look better before I never did any post work with my images rather then just touching up bad spots, and want to make it a practice so what are some basic things one should do in Post work. thanks again guys you have been a great help Dark Raven

that's top of her neck showing though her face ::ack!::

ahhh I was just thinking that too after hours of playing with the head some more Thanks Now if anyone has some post work basics Im still looking for where to start as far as doing post work....:-( I have no clue as what are the most common things to do in post work. Dark Raven

Thanks again for all your help I got my image done and it can be seen in the gallery Now