How to: Ghost, Soul & Spirit Effects 2 (Pixiv Fanbox)

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This is your guide to the more advanced method of doing a Ghost, Soul and Spirit effect. Please make sure you've read the basic guide first as the advanced guide will not recap it.

The guide to the basic effect can be read here: https://kawaii-tsunaho.fanbox.cc/posts/4724825

Advanced Methods

To achieve more advanced effects, the prep work you need to do is a bit more involved. To start with, you need screenshots that only contain a single part of your scene, no extra backgrounds.

It's very similar to how the basic method works except for advanced editing, you don't want your ghost layer to include anything other than the characters turning into ghosts.

To do this, you need to save your screenshots as PNGs and allow transparency to be saved too. Look for your screenshot mod settings and set them to allow that.

Once transparency is enabled, take a screenshot of your scene with everyone present. A screenshot without the ghost characters present and a screenshot with only your ghost characters. Your map, any items, etc all need to be removed/hidden for the ghost only screenshot.

If you have multiple ghosts and may want to edit their effects differently, take individual screenshots of both of them. This will make things easier for you later on. If there's any map items or objects that should be on top of your characters, also take screenshots of them without any background behind them to add back to the scene afterwards.

Now that you have all your screenshots, open them all inside your editing software e.g. Photoshop, Gimp, etc. Make sure your ghost layer is on top again and your base layer is on the bottom. If there is any part of your ghost that will be merged/ clipped with a non-ghost character, add the everyone image below the ghost layer to act as a guide later on.

With your ghost layer now only containing the characters that will be turned into ghosts, you can apply any sort of filters, effects, etc to them and not affect anything else in the scene. So, first off, apply some opacity, the amount doesn't matter right now and can be adjusted later on.

With some base opacity added, you can see how any filters or settings you add to the layer will affect them overall. Personally, I like to give the ghosts a glowing effect, so if you're using photoshop, go to the fx settings for the layer and add some outer glow.

I won't go into the specific setting values I use, play around with the settings you have and go with the effect you like.

The fx layer settings offer a bunch of different effects you can add, try them out one at a time and include any you find appealing. I don't recommend including more than 2 or 3 as an effect is best left reasonably simple, but it's entirely up to you.

Other settings you can apply are filters such as blurs, distortion, colour changing ,etc. There are many different ones you can play with. Personally, for ghosts, I use a small amount of Motion blur (applied to a duplicated layer of the ghost's layer with a smaller amount of opacity than the main ghost layer) and high pass.

High pass which is listed under the "other" tab of filters, gives the layer a different opacity effect at lower settings and a brighter effect at higher settings.

higher settings

Again, settings at this point are entirely up to you. Go nuts and find out what works for you. Undo anything you don't like and move on. I recommend only using 2 or 3 at once.

Next, for scenes where you intend to merge or connect your ghosts with non-ghost items or characters. You'll need to erase part of your ghost layer to create this, as by having them on a different layer, the ghosts sit on top of everything, removing all clipping. You can do this using the guide layer you have. Select all the areas of the non-ghost character where the ghost character overlaps with them.

Then swap to the ghost layer and delete everything inside that selection from the ghost layer.

You'll then want to smooth out your connecting edges as they'll now be rough from the deleted selection. You can do this with any blur, smudge, etc tool. Once that's done, you'll have your connecting ghost effect.

Repeat that for any other characters as needed.

After any connections are dealt with, I add any blur effects I want to include. To do this, I create a duplicate layer with a smaller amount of opacity and apply the blur to that on top of the main ghost layer. Doing this allows the ghosts to keep most of their details and not lose it to the blur effect.

For me, this is as far as I usually go with it. You can add more effects if you want or adjust other things if needed. You can use the individual ghost layers if you want each ghost to have different effects, e.g. different colours. When using the same effects across multiple screenshots, you can use the "copy layer style" option to copy and paste the fx settings across. However, filter settings will have to be added manually again.

Hopefully, that should explain how you can pull off special effects with ghosts. It's a lot of trial and error until you reach something you find appealing. If there's anything you're unclear about or you think hasn't been explained well enough, please let me know below. If there's something you would like to see a guide on, comment below and I'll try to explain it with a guide.

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