Tuesday, November 20, 2007

How To Make Another Optical Illusion

I wrote yesterday about another optical illusion. (Saw it in Digg.) I guess it's time to explain how to do it. When I saw the image, big gears started to turn in my head, and it took me about 4,58863462564562 seconds to figure out how to do it in Photoshop. The lines makes the faded image on the background to lose contrast when you're close and to gain contrast when you are far away... Similar mechanics behind this illusion as in the first illusion, but not quite the same. I tested it and it worked. (Somehow.)

Oh, and a tip: You can look at the image from the side to see the effect from a closer range.

Preparations - Making A Texture

1. Make a new image, about 6px x 6px. Transparent.
2. Take black pen and draw vertical line from the top left to bottom left. 3px wide.
3. Save as PSD.

Making Of The Illusion

1. Take an image. Any image you like.
2. Desaturate. (Make it Black and White.)
3. Take out all the parts you don't like from the sides. Ie, the background.
4. Use Burn and Dodge tools and Brightness/Contrast to make the image as low in contrast as possible. (Don't mind about the brightness yet. Just make it gray(ish) and very low in contrast.)
5. Create a new layer and fill it with white.
6. Filter/Texture/Texturizer and load the PSD file. Light direction left, scaling 100% and relief 50 or as high as it goes. (From this point on your zoom needs to be 100%.)
7. Select/Color range/Pure white.
8. Press Delete.
9. Switch back to the bottom layer, with the image you want to vanish when you're close and appear when you go further away. Using Brightness/Contrast you can lower the contrast and make the brightness higher. Go far and close while having the Brightness/Contrast dialog open so you see from the preview when it's nice.

A vot. Horosho!

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