Ghost Mannequin Photography: Mastering the 3D Effect for Your Photos

One way to improve your editing picture is by using the 3D Ghost Mannequin effect, especially for product photography. If you don’t have spare time, contacting a trusted ghost mannequin service would be helpful.

Ghost mannequin is an effect especially for fashion photography. This effect is also well-known as the ‘hollow man’ effect. To achieve the result of this effect, you can use an editing software like Adobe Photoshop by following the tutorial below.

What are the benefits of using this effect to your products and how is the tutorial to use these effects? Find out below and start mastering your editing skills now.

The Advantages of the Ghost Mannequin Effect

This ghost mannequin effect has several advantages for your product photography, especially if you have an apparel business. Starting from saving your budgets until product transparency for your customers.

1. Saving Budgets

The first advantage is cost-efficiency for your product marketing. Ghost mannequin uses a mannequin during your production, which is able to be used more than once.. Other than that, the production process is cheaper than hiring a model.

This both allows you to keep your product photography great as well as allocating your budget to other promotions.

2. Product Reliability

Second, this effect allows you to have product consistency, especially for your e-commerce page. Product consistency will lead to attracting your customers’ trust. Not only that, your products’ visual appearance will look more professional and done by the experts.

3. Transparency

Last, the ghost mannequin 3D effect shows the product transparency which is highly beneficial for your customers. Before buying a product, customers would like to know the details of the product such as the style or the shape.

By using this effect, you can make your customers well informed about your products. They will repurchase if they get a satisfactory product.

Mastering the Ghost Mannequin Effect

After knowing the benefits of using this effect, here is the tutorial for making a ghost mannequin 3D effect for your product photography:

1. Photo Production Before Editing

Before coming to the editing stage, the production should be prepared well to make the raw files are easily edited into this effect. During the photo production, you can use a mannequin and make sure that the apparel suits it well. A little tip is that white and matte mannequins are easily editable because they are non-reflective.

Make sure you have prepared high-quality studio settings for the set-up and photographing. While taking the pictures, set the camera on your chest or hip. This will help you make the product less distorted.

Capture the front and the back of the apparel. Do not forget to capture the details of the product, like the buttons, collars, sleeves, and others.

2. Setting the Layers

Finished with the photo production, you can start editing your photos into ghost mannequin photography with editing software like Adobe Photoshop. The first thing you should do after importing the photos is set the layer.

Click twice on the layer so it can be editable. Rename the layer ‘layer 1’. After that, create a new layer and put it behind ‘layer 1’. Name the layer ‘layer 2’. Click Shift + F5 and fill the ‘layer 2’ with 100% black. If your apparel is black, choose the colour white.

3. Select the Background

To select the background, use the Magic Wand tool on the left side of the screen. In the options bar, make sure to select Subject and Select and Mask, then click on Select and Mask.

After that, you should make sure that the View is set to ‘on layer’. Then, click Select Subject at the top of the screen and wait until Adobe Photoshop figures out the subject of your picture, it will create your selection.

4. Select the Mannequin

The next step is moving the apparel from the mannequin. For this, you can use the Quick Selection tool, choose Subtract and select areas of the mannequin that appear by clicking on them in the Preview Window.

If you remove part of the clothing accidentally, click CTRL+Z or undo, and reduce the “Size” option. In this part, you can also use Shift Edge to remove halo effects on your photos.

5. Create a Layer Mask

Once you have removed the clothing from the mannequin, move to create a layer mask by following these steps:

• In your ‘Layer 1’, click on the mask icon to mask out the subject’s background.
• Select the mask icon next to the ‘Layer 1’.
• Choose the Eraser tool.
• Set white the foreground colour and set black for the background colour.
• Erase out any details of the mannequin that are not necessary.

6. Make Selections of the Interior

If you want the interior (e.g: the neck, sleeves, etc) to look full, you can use Warp by choosing Edit, then click Transform and Warp. Once you are finished, you can use the Eraser tool to remove unnecessary areas that don’t align with the neck.

7. Clean up and Darken the Details

To excel your editing skills into a great ghost mannequin 3D effect, you can drop shadows on the interior of the clothing. Follow the steps below:

• In the Layers panel, click the Neck or your desired interior.
• Choose Image, then Adjustments, then Curves.
• In the Curves, click on the centre of the line going through the graph.
• Pull the line down until you see the inside of the neck is darkening.

This step can be repeated to any other details you want.

8. Change the Background

Other than all the steps from 1-7 above, you can also change the background to the colour you desire. You can change the colour into black, white, or anything else as it fits your ghost mannequin.

Use Ghost Mannequin Effect to Boost Your Photos

When producing photography content especially for apparel, ghost mannequin is highly recommended to make your customer see the product details. Surely, this effect can make your customers more informed.

That’s all the tutorial for the ghost mannequin effect. You can use the tutorial to improve your product photography..