Creating a Ghost in Photoshop

I was going home by train one day when I thought of a cool/creepy image. The good thing was that I brought my camera to work that day, and my fellow passenger Marie-Louise was going home as well.

The result (after just a few minutes of Photoshop) is this photo in which Marie-Louise looks at her phone, but her reflection in the window is looking at herself!

Marie-Louise's reflection looking at herself

Making such an image is quite easy. I made two photo's of Marie-Louise, one looking at her phone and one looking outside the window. While doing this I tried to move as little as possible.

Photo 1: Looking at phone

Photo 2: Looking outside

Next I used Photoshop CS 6 to combine the two photo's. I stacked the files by opening them like this: File -> Scripts -> Load files into stack -> Select your files here, and also select 'attempt to automatically align source images'. If there are enough 'handles' for Photoshop, and the photo's are similar enough, alignment won't be a problem.

Now, the two photo's are aligned and put into separate layers. I put the 'looking-at-phone' image on top and used the eraser (with a feathered brush) to remove the window. Note: before you do this, disable the layer visibility of the other (bottom) layer so you can see what you're doing.

Window is erased

Now, when the window is removed, turn the bottom layer back on to watch the result, and there you go: save the image and your 'creepy-ghost-photo' is done in just a few minutes! :-)