Take two pictures
1. The first should be empty to create a static background to work from

This is your starter image - you could make yours scarier looking than mine if you want it to be really “ghostly”

2. The second should contain you or the person you’re going to make a “ghost”.

See that creepy looking guy with the menacing gesture - yeah, that's our ghost. Casper's got nothing on this guy.

Use a tripod - it will make the shots line up better. For the second shot set the camera to self-timer mode to give yourself time to get into the frame

Photoshop work
1. Open the two photos in Adobe Photoshop and arrange them so you can see at least part of each photo
2. With the Move Tool (V) click into the photo with your ghost subject
3. While holding shift, click & drag the photo with your ghost subject into the empty photo - this should, if you’ve taken the photos from a tripod or otherwise made the camera sit still, perfectly align the two photos so that everything in the background lines up perfectly.  To check this, change the top layer’s blending mode to difference.  If everything is lined up the only part of the image that won’t be black is the part where your ghost subject is.  Be sure to change the blending mode back to normal before you continue
4. Change the opacity of the top layer (with your ghost subject) to 50%

Top layer's opacity set to 50% - It's already kind of ghostly at this point, but we can do more.

5. At the bottom of the layers palette click the new layer icon to create a new layer.
6. Select the brush tool and be sure that you have a nice round brush and that your brush hardness is set to 0% and change the flow setting to 50%.

Brush Settings - You can see I picked a pretty big brush and set the hardness to 0%. This creates a very feathered soft brush.

7. On the new layer you just created,  paint over the ghost subject with the brush tool in a blue - in this example I picked the following:

Color Settings - you can pick whatever color you want to make your Ghost glow.

The results of brushing over the Ghost subject

H: Now change the blending mode on the blue layer to Screen and watch your ghost appear.

Layer Blending Mode Settings - choose “Scream” – I mean “Screen” from the dropdown list at the top of the layers Palette

Final Results - Not too scary but definitely ghostly.

Play with the blending modes and colors to manipulate the image in any way you like.  Try adding shadows and highlights with lighter and darker colors.

Added some filters (glowing edges, various noise, etc.) The point is have fun - experiment, its the best way to learn how things work.

An exceptionally well-worded post about the urinal. Every guy wants one in their home, if they say they don’t - they’re lying. I would, like the author, choose the floor urinal.

Speaking of urinals - check out the big, blue, robotic, urinal-cleaning elephant.

Video footage of NASA’s new methane powered rocket engine. Wow.

If you haven’t heard about Rickrolling see wikipedia. If you haven’t seen it with Beaker & The Muppets you’re missing out.

Steve Carell (From NBC’s The Office & the upcoming Get Smart movie) has 10 pieces of advice on How to Act Brilliant.

Helium-balloon flying priest. Seriously.

Google Street View - kid falls off bike as Street View Van catches the before and after.  Click the arrows and rotate the angle to watch it happen.

Quicksilver - absolutely essential. Once you learn to use Quicksilver to launch your apps and you’ll never dig through the Applications folder in the finder again. And that’s just the beginning.  Find out more about how to use Quicksilver by watching Episode12 or Episode 17 of Macbreak.

Flip4mac - Nobody that owns a Mac really wants anything that has anything to do with Microsoft on their machine.  Thankfully this app isn’t made by the boys in Redmond so it works really well.  This app makes QuickTime work with Windows Media files - a video format which is used by many, many Web sites.

Perian - the Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime - meaning it’ll make QuickTime play files that it normally wouldn’t, like FLV.  What this means is that you can download flash videos from Google Video & YouTube and actually be able to use them almost anywhere you can use QuickTime.

Firefox - Safari is a great, fast browser, but Firefox needs to be on your Mac.  I use it as my everyday browser and with plugins for web development, del.icio.us bookmarks and ad blockers it makes browsing productive.

Cyberduck - I know a lot of Mac users love Panic’s Transmit application for FTP but I’m a big fan of Cyberduck.  It works consistently and plays really nice with many of the other apps I use day-to-day.

Growl - Growl is a system notification app. It alerts you to various events that are happening on your machine.  I use it to alert me to new mail and inform me of ftp upload completion (it plays really nice with Cyberduck, Mail.app, Adium, iPhoto (w/FlickrExport) and NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire - NetNewsWire is an awesome RSS reader. I use it to keep up on the news sites and blogs I read. It uses NewsGator to sync what I have and have not read between the various machines I use.

SuperDuper! - SuperDuper! is a painless backup & recovery software.  During the mess that was the upgrade to OS X 10.5 I used SuperDuper to backup and restore my system more times than I wish to remember.  It creates a disk image that  is bootable from any firewire drive.  It’s basic functions are free but it’s well worth the money for the extended functionality.

Handbrake - A DVD, ahem, backup tool. You know, for all those DVD’s you have that you’d like to have digital copies of so you can, um, watch them on your computer, without actually having to use the discs.  It’s really great if you have an AppleTV, like me.

Adium - Adium is a multi-protocol chat client- meaning it works with AIM, Google Talk & Yahoo! and many more. It can be buggy, but it’s great for having one place to chat with everyone.

Widgets

Technically these aren’t really applications, maybe web apps, but most are just graphics with javascript, HTML and CSS.  I don’t use them a ton but these two have found a special place on my Macs.

• Delivery Status Widget - works with all kinds of shippers and notifies you of updates via Growl
• Jared: The Butcher of Song - every once in a while you need to be serenaded - this is not for those times.

What about you?

Do you have any apps that are must haves on all your Macs? Have a widget you can’t live without? Drop me a comment and let me know.

Zombo.com - turn up your speakers and realize that you can do anything.

Muxtape.com - upload and share music with your friends. I did - check it out at gitgan.muxtape.com Drop me a comment if you make one.

Misheard Creedence Clearwater Revival Lyrics - you’ll hear the words on screen. When its over sew the sea.

Geni - an awesome way to build your family tree. Simple, easy, clean. Try it!

Monoprice.com - need HDMI cables? Please don’t ever buy cables from a big box store - they’re overpriced and the sales people will try to sell you Monster cables which aren’t any better than the one’s you can get from Monoprice.com. I got my cables for $4.73 and picked up a Wii Component Cable for under 5 Bucks! Beat that BestBuy.