Transparent monitor screen

[stratocast]

I stumbled across this fun idea the other day, something to play about with if you're bored.

How to make your monitor display "transparent". I'm sure you can figure how it's done, but if not.....

The process is pretty simple.

1. With digital camera and tripod (if you have a tripod great, I didn't bother for my quick effort shown below), take a photo of your monitor, then move your monitor out of the way and take a pic of the background from the same position.
2. Import the two pics on separate layers in Xtreme (or Photoshop etc. However, you'll have to figure the rest out for yourself or go here for a tutorial http://www.photut.com/tutorial-trans...ft-screen.html)
3. Make the layer with the monitor pic transparent and uneditable.
4. Crop the background pic to fit the monitor screen. (I used a rectangle to get the basic size, then tweaked it to fit precisely by converting to a shape and adjusting as necesssary.)
5. Export crop at the resolution of your desktop (1280x1024x96ppi, in my case).
6. Set the exported pic as your desktop wallpaper.
7. Take photo of your masterpiece and say, "What a complete waste of time!"

There are some funky examples here http://soviyet.blogspot.com/2007/02/...e-hosting.html

Here's my quick and yes, dirty effort (the computer's in my workshop), it took about 10 minutes to do. (Before you ask, it is my wallpaper not just a pic pasted in another pic of my monitor.)

[Grafixman]

Haha, that's radical. Disconcerting, but great idea!.
You could also probably photo manipulate it so you have weird creatures coming out from a hole in the wall. Probably something for Halloween?! Now that should make anybody unaware of the wallpaper jump up if they happen to be the one to boot up the computer.
Also, how about photographing it with the monitor in place? You could copy and paste duplicates in the photographed monitor to create an infinite mirror effect.
(Which is weird, too, since I just happened to post an infinite mirror effect in the PI forum... strange coincidence...)
Even weirder effect if you could get somebody to photograph the back of your head while sitting in front of the computer, then you'd get an impossible mirror/infinite mirror effect.

[Intbel]

I'll remember that for a wet Sunday afternoon.

[ankhor]

Here's my quick and yes, dirty effort (the computer's in my workshop), it took about 10 minutes to do. (Before you ask, it is my wallpaper not just a pic pasted in another pic of my monitor.)

Looks great, but it would be great is you had backdrop shadows of the icons too on the wall, and ofcourse of the 'rim' of the monitor, than it would
look like it was made of glass.