How to Create an Invisible Person

The invisible man from H.G. Well's is one of my favorite books and inspired this photo manipulation.  As the model for this photo I can tell you it was very hot wearing all this stuff and standing in front of to photo lamps while getting my picture taken for a good 45 minutes. I used a cheap tripod and Samsung note as my camera not any fancy dslr and awesome photography studio equipment. Also I wanted to mention that you can rent Photoshop for 20 bucks for a month ( or safe 20 bucks and pirate the software till you have the money to buy it) or save the money to buy it legitimately, but with this new rent feature Photoshop is accessible to all If you wanted to play with it and test it out before you commit to a big purchase.

Step 1: The Setup

If you have lights use them if not use natural sun light its great. Now set up your tripod and camera to a blank wall back ground. When it comes to the clothing coats, long sleeved shirts, gloves, and a face warping are all needed. However as you can see I leave pieces exposed I did this on purpose to sell the fact that I am invisible.

Step 2: Background Removal

My suggestion for this step is to get all the background removed from the clothes then the hair and flesh. Using the pen tool you will want to go along the edge of the model  then go outwards in to the background  and come back to the original starting point and close up the pen line then right click and select "make selection" then hit okay then hit the delete button and repeat till the background is away from the model.  ( reference the pictures). Afterwards, began to remove the skin from all the areas try and keep the shapes of the clothing and bandages intact. (reference pictures). 

Step 3: Filling in the Missing Pieces of the Bandages

this step will take time and finesse working by copying pieces then moving them under the layer till you create enough to fill up the space then using the spot healing brush to fix those seams the selection tool makes. The clone tool, selection tool, and the spot healing brush will be your best friends here and there is not really a wrong way to do this just try your best and reference the photos below and work slowly.

Don't forget to merge before using the spot healing brushes.

Step 4: Filling in Areas

this is easy on an area below make selections of the spaces that will be needing some darkness like a hole the chest  and the sleeve of the jacket. If you reference the pictures I make the edge of the cuff then then fill both areas with a black gradient that goes from black to a slightly almost black which you will have to judge for your self because it depends on the exposure. 

Step 5: Adding the Background and Color Correction

I used a stock background from here link, I dropped it in then re-sized it to fit. That is how simple the back ground was to place in. 

If you want to get some free smoke brushes from deviant art and add a bit of smoke to give a little bit of shape go ahead but its really not a effect breaker and might look better without the smoke.

I'm not going to go over the color correction in high detail because it only could be an instructable so I made it in to a Photoshop action that you can use change and then add to you photo. However, first depending on the back ground you may have to add a photo filter to you model since I am a bit yellow and my background is bluish I add a cyan filter.

Step 6: The Blur

first I used a Gaussian blur of 2 and mixed it with field blur and iris blur which are both under blur in filters. Its all about drawing focus to areas that need it and letting the rest be out of focus that slowly gets sharper towards your subject of interest corralling the eyes to the importance of the subject. Mess with it and change the settings and shapes to get the blur you want.