• Home
  • About John P.
  • Contact
  • Terms
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

One Man's Blog

Specialization is for Insects.

  • 10 Best
  • Art
  • Computing
  • Fun Stuff
  • Gadgets
  • Videos
  • Photography
  • Travel
  • Tutorials
  • Health & Fitness
  • Politics
  • Thoughts
  • Food
  • Reviews
  • 10 Best
  • Art
  • Computing
  • Fun Stuff
  • Gadgets
  • Videos
  • Photography
  • Travel
  • Tutorials
  • Health & Fitness
  • Politics
  • Thoughts
  • Food
  • Reviews
Home / Photography / Tutorial: The Transparent Desktop Trick – 45 Awesome Photos of Clear Screen Monitors!

Tutorial: The Transparent Desktop Trick – 45 Awesome Photos of Clear Screen Monitors!

John P.

March 9, 2015 By John P.

Here’s something cool you may have never seen! A TRANSPARENT monitor! :-) Actually, its just a trick… but I’m gonna teach you a really easy way to do it (skip to the tutorial)! And after you make a few bets with your office buddies and win some cash, send some my way!

Just to set the tone, you’ll get the picture (pun intended) pretty quick by looking at the sample images here, but a transparent screen is one that has a wallpaper set on it that exactly matches whatever is in the picture behind the screen, thereby causing it to appear to be transparent.

This especially makes for a fun screensaver, so that when your computer goes to sleep it appears to become transparent. Keep in mind that the effect is VERY directional. So you have to be viewing it from just the right angle or everything appears to be slightly off.

The Images

Here’s a whole batch of sample images of transparent screens, and then I’ll show you exactly how to make one yourself!



You can also get fancy and try some of these!



How it’s Done

Ok, now on to how it’s done! For our purposes, I’m going to use Photoshop since its the most widely used editor. But if you have another application that uses layers, you should be able to easily replicate this process.

  1. Clean up your desktop (optional :-) and set the background to a bright green color. You want to pick a crazy green color, or something else unusual that won’t match anything in your background, because it’s going to make anything that color disappear!
    Bright Green Desktop

  2. Set your camera on a tripod and take a picture of the exact scene you want, without your laptop or monitor in the photo.
    Transparent Desktop 2
  3. Place your monitor, laptop, tablet or whatever screen into the scene and take a second photo without moving your camera at all. Also, I would suggest manually focusing and keeping the same focus if your camera can do that.
    Transparent Desktop 1
  4. Open the two photos in Photoshop as separate layers in a single new image, ensuring that the image with the screen is the one on the top.
  5. From the SELECT menu, choose COLOR RANGE.
    Photoshop Color Range
  6. Place the eyedropper tool over the Green screen and click in the green area to select that entire color. You might need to fiddle with the options a bit to get the optimal mask with your given screen choice.
  7. After the area is selected, CUT or DELETE the area and you should see right through the screen to whatever was behind it!
    Transparent Desktop 3

So that you don’t have to go and take your own photos, here are my practice images.

  • Background table
  • Foreground laptop

If you make something cool be sure to Tweet it at me (@johnpoz) so I can see what you did! :-)

Related

Filed Under: Photography, Tutorials Tagged With: Photography, Screensaver, Tutorials, Wallpaper

About John P.

John P. is a former CEO, former TV Show Host, and the Founder and Wizard behind Texas Metal Works. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Feel free to send shoutouts, insults, and praise. Or Money. Money is good.

Comments

  1. faisal says

    March 12, 2015 at 12:21 pm

    These are just amazing.

  2. Hemal Monani says

    March 9, 2015 at 9:03 am

    Hey John,
    Thank you for a great post. I think by mistake you published same link for both, Background table and Foreground laptop. I hope you will fix it soon.

    Thanks
    Hemal Monani

John P’s Tweets

Tweets by johnpoz

Read Over 2,500,000 Times

  • How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords
  • Amusing Little Helicopter Game
  • A Compendium of 150 Monty Python Sketches
  • 10 Worst Drivers Ever Caught On Video
  • Get Your Virtual Haircut and Other Auditory Illusions
  • How Crack Cocaine is Made

Copyright © 2023 · Local Media on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...