Comments on: Branislav’s Great Ghost Technique

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:48:37 +0000

Brett, try the technique I described in comment #9. Does that work?

By: Brett B

Brett B — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:43:40 +0000

Not working for me… Paper cannot be “Screened”

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:15:47 +0000

Thanks for the great idea for a eye doctors ad.
Simple way to do same in IndesignCS, create steps 1,2 & 3 above give the txt on top a yelllow 0.1 or 100 if you like then output the file to pdf with all colours but black set to OpaqueIgnore then inport the file into indesign all you get is the drop shadow. Same goes for colour drop shadow, just make the text black. It’s a little more stuffing around but for us still stuck with CS at least it works

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:55:25 +0000

One other technique, care of Adobe’s Matt Phillips: Set the color of an object to Paper, set the blend mode to Multiply, and then give it a drop shadow. In the Effects dialog box, make sure that Object Knocks out Shadow is turned off.

Note that this may appear wrong on screen when the object is over just the paper background. It should look correct over anything else, and it should look correct when you print/export.

When I asked Matt about this weird screen artifact, he said, “It’s similar to how a 50% opaque cyan rectangle looks different when it’s on top of a white rectangle vs when there’s nothing but the page background behind it. Turning on overprint preview or changing your blending space to RGB, or any kind of print/export eliminates the artifact.” Interesting!

By: Eugene Tyson

Eugene Tyson — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:11:59 +0000

Hmmm… I’ve been dalying with this technique and I have to say, I’m getting close, with text at least, by just applying basic feather, gradient feather and directional feather to the text. Not sure if it will work with all text, but certainly a neat way to a slight blur without photoshopping it.

I’m certainly not saying anything about the technique in the write-up, it’s very good and got me thinking about it. I have very very little use for effects in my line of work at the moment. That doesn’t mean I won’t in the future. Thanks for the tips, and at least I know about it now.

Cheers,
Eugene

By: DJ

DJ — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:10:44 +0000

Wow this is great for mere mortals like myself who could never come up with this stuff! Thanks a bunch

By: Gerald Singelmann

Gerald Singelmann — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:10:35 +0000

A high feather should result in nothing more problematic than invisible pixels. Not bigger than the object itself since a feather always blurs inwards.
This is (as a friend told me) the standard way to animate an object going invisible in AfterEffects…

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:59:51 +0000

Excellent points, Gerald! Interesting. I think the idea of “high feather value” may cause problems, but the Screened Paper color is a very good idea.

By: Gerald Singelmann

Gerald Singelmann — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:41:43 +0000

Really fruitful post

There is a lot easier way to accomlpish the same result in CS3:
- give the text a shadow as said above
- tell the shadow to ignore other effects
- make the text invisible by giving it a very high feather value
- alternatively you can make the text invisible by filling it with paper and setting it (only the text, not the object) to “screen”

Both only possible in CS3 of course.

By: Gerald Singelmann

Gerald Singelmann — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:35:39 +0000

Very nice trick.
In a 4c document you can substitute the “simulate overprint” option this way, by setting the objects in question to a high opacity.
One should be aware that it will not make a difference with a spot shadow, but I suppose these are rare.