#Double Exposures, Film Photography

How to Create a Double Exposure in Photoshop (Easily!)

By Nick Constant 

 

Double exposures are a great way to get creative with images in a simple way. It’s a technique that uses two photographs to create a new image. It can be a powerful way to present a concept or a fun way to combine two scenes.

Today, I will show you how to create your double exposure in Photoshop. I have been working with double exposures in film photography and digital photography for a few years. Here are the best tips I have picked up from these years of practice.

Anna Maghradze

What Is A Double Exposure?

A double exposure in photography is when you take two exposures over the same section of film or digital sensor. This means that the film or image you get on your digital camera will have an overlay of two images on a single image.

A majority of digital cameras will not give you the option to make a double exposure, so you will have to do this on Adobe Photoshop. With film cameras, you have to rewind the film and then reshoot the whole film again! This means you will get a random double exposure (unless you counted your frames and remember your images well!).

Double exposure work by taking advantage of the dark sections in an image. If a specific section hasn’t been exposed, the second exposure is likely to fill in these areas. This means dark places will disappear in a double exposure, and light spots will punch through.

What is a Double Exposure Effect?

A double exposure effect is a technique you can do on Adobe Photoshop to achieve a double exposure but with added control. With a photographic method based on chance, control means the edit’s success will rely on your creativity alone.

The control you have ranges from the images you choose to which part of the picture contains each image. Often, this comes in the form where a landscape is projected onto someone’s clothes or faces.

You can add gradients and even use two or more exposures for extra control. It all depends on what image you are trying to create and what feeling you want to convey to the viewer.

Why Create a Double Exposure?

Double exposure photos create a great relationship between two images. They are great for making images that look like you are looking into the subject’s soul. A great example is when you use landscapes as the second image inside a model. We are presented with a scene and cannot help but link our feelings to the person depicted.

We can use this to our advantage. If we want to portray someone as calm, we could pick the sea as the second exposure. Similarly, if we wanted to depict someone as angry, we could pick fire as the second exposure.

Alternately, we could use an empty subject and fill it with people. This could work well for a picture of your family home. You can put a portrait of your family members inside this house!

Anna Maghradze

How to Make a Double Exposure Effect in Photoshop

A double exposure effect can be tricky to get your head around. Trial and error will be a part of this process, but to help, I will guide you through an easy step-by-step.

Step 1: Selecting and Masking your Image

First, find the image you want to be the main subject of your photograph. This could be anything from your pet to a lamp! I have chosen this portrait from a stock image site, unsplash.com. Now, open your image in Adobe Photoshop.

Crop the image to your ideal size.

This is the suitable composition that I want for my final image.

I will duplicate my background by dragging the layer to the bottom and dropping it on the “new layer” thumbnail.

Next, grab your Quick Select tool from the left-hand toolbar. Be sure the top brush has a + sign next to it.

Now you can start slowly painting the subject you want to select.

Once the whole body is selected, make sure you double-check the image to avoid missing any parts. Select “add layer mask” at the bottom of your layers toolbar.

This new box will now appear towards the right of your screen. Click on “select and mask”.

This will bring up this new page. Here you can feather the outline to about 2 pixels. Most importantly, under Output Settings, make sure you output to a Layer Mask.

Step 2: Prepping The Image

We will add a solid colour layer to have a neutral background. Go to New Adjustment Layers at the bottom of the layers toolbar and select “solid colour”.

Here you can choose any colour you like, but I will go with a neutral grey.

This is what your layers section will look like.

And this is how your image should currently look.

Step 3: Adding Your Double Exposure

Now, let’s bring up the second image that you want inside your subject. I have chosen this forest scene.

I want to stick with being monochromatic, so I go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Let’s move this image into the other photoshop document by dragging the layer across.

Use Command+T (Control+T for Windows) to adjust the image how you would like it. I have rotated the image to make the image a bit more interesting.

I am happy with this selection because the dark bit of the image is roughly where the model’s face will be.

Command+click (Control+click for windows) the layer mask of the model.

This will add the silhouette to your image. This is an excellent way to see how the image will look on your subject.

With the marching ants still over your image, select the new layer (the forest image) and click on “add a mask”.

This is how your image should look.

Select your original layer and duplicate it by dragging it to the bottom of the Layers toolbar and dropping it on Add New Layer. Then bring the new layer to the top.

We will add contrast to this new layer to improve the double exposure effect. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels.

Use the Shadow and Highlight sliders to add more contrast to your liking. My image already has a bit of contrast, so I won’t mess with this too much.

Now desaturate this layer as well.

Finally, let’s go to the blending modes for our new top layer. You can select these to see which works best, but I have found that Screen replicates a double exposure best.

This is what your image should now look like.

Step 4: Extra Touches

To give the image a bit more depth, let’s add a slight shadow behind our subject. First, select the “colour fill” layer.

Now, grab the brush tool and set a low Opacity and Flow. Make sure your brush has soft edges, and you’re painting with black selected.

Slowly go around your image outline and add where you think the shade is necessary. This is what my image will look like.

If I were to Alt-click on the Colour Fill mask, this slight shadow is what you will see. It doesn’t seem like much, but it helps the subject pop out the image nicely.

Now you have a simple double exposure!

Double exposure photos have a unique aesthetic to them. Using this aesthetic to your advantage can produce some impactful images. This allows you to make a double exposure in Photoshop that isn’t just aesthetically pleasing but also conceptual. Maybe you choose a landscape that is important to the subject? Or perhaps you make an object the subject and put a group image of you and your friends inside?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Another FREE Photography Ebook 

What Should Be On Your Photoshoot Prep Checklist – Free Quick Guide

Download Your Free Guide Now →

Whether you are getting ready to photograph a wedding, a senior portrait, or a vacation spot, it pays to be prepared – literally.

Prepared photographers make more money and come away with better pictures.

Going into your shoot organized means that you can give your clients your full attention during the photoshoot, control what you can, and limit what can go wrong.

When the inevitable happens and something does not go as planned, you are ready with a solution.

You feel confident and so does your client. A happy client is a repeat client!

In this eBook, we will cover what should be on your photoshoot prep checklist.

Having a checklist ensures that you do not forget something important, and you can move seamlessly from one shooting opportunity to the next. Most importantly, you can go into the day focused on making beautiful images.

Here is what will be covered in detail:

• Collecting Supplies, Equipment, and Gear
• Preparing Equipment and Gear
• Confirming Project Details and Expectations
• Scouting Location
• Planning a Backup

Your Copy is Here.

Photo Credit: H.F.E. & Co Studio

Download Your Free Guide Now → 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 

 

  

       

 

 

 

#Camera Modes, Camera Hacks

 

Free Photography Ebook

Camera Basics Series: Shooting Modes Explained – Free Quick Guide

Download Your Free Guide Now →

There probably isn’t a more confusing and misunderstood topic on the camera side of photography than the shooting modes.

Shooting modes may be incredibly confusing to people just starting in photography; after all, there are so many letters and icons on that mode dial! What do these letters and icons mean?

Good question! And the sooner you understand them; the earlier your photography will improve and become more predictable.

This is what will be covered in this guide:

• Auto Mode
• Program Mode
• Shutter Speed Priority Mode
• Aperture Priority Mode
• Manual Mode
• The differences in the Nikon and Canon mode dials
• A note on Scene Modes

There are those that believe that the manual mode is the only mode that a real photographer uses.

We don’t believe that. There are reasons that all of these different modes are available to photographers, even on the most professional level DSLR cameras.

Each mode has a purpose.

Are you ready to learn about them? Let’s go! 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

How to Choose Horizon Placement in Composition

By Josh Dunlop 

Why Horizons

When a frame is divided by a single, dominant line, more often than not this is due to a Horizon. They’re fairly common in outdoor photography, particularly landscapes.
If the photo is of nothing particularly interesting, this line can become the dominant part of the photo for the way it separates the frame.

Where to Place the Horizon and Why?

Firstly, I think it’s important to realise where you don’t want to place the line, and that’s directly in the middle of the frame. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t ever it, this just has a tendency to divide the photo in half, creating an uneven photo.
The contrast between the two halves makes it look more like two separate photos.
Exactly where you place the horizon is completely up to you but it helps to remember that, if a feature of a photo does nothing to improve it, it has no place in the photo to begin with.
Here’s a photo where the horizon has divided the frame in two. Notice that it doesn’t really favor either half.
If you take the horizon and place it slightly lower in the frame, you regain a feeling of stability which balances out the photo better.
You also remove the feeling of division and the whole photo starts to come together as a single image made up of multiple elements, rather than just two photos stuck together.
Have a look at the photo below to see what I mean.
If you were to decide that the top half of the frame was much more interesting than the bottom, you may want to adjust your composition so that the horizon is a lot lower in the frame.
The photo below was taken from a tower in London on a rainy day with emphasis on the sky.
The cityscape adds an interesting texture to photo but holds much less visual weight. It serves to make the man made city look small in comparison to the powerful sky and weather.
This is one of the many interesting, extra feelings which can be evoked when you consider the importance of different aspects of a photo and adjust your composition accordingly.
The photo below was taken directly after the photo above and focuses largely on the ground, rather than the sky.
This photo contrasts greatly with the one above because it doesn’t evoke the same feelings, instead focusing more on the colour and lines in the city.
Your eyes are naturally drawn up the photo from the colour of the trees and houses at the bottom of the frame to the sharp and jagged nature of the buildings by the sky at the top.
An equally interesting photo but for different reasons, all because of the decisions made over the placement of the horizon. Importantly though, you’ll see that both images are stronger than the original image which cut the photo in half.
If you want to include both the sky and the ground but don’t want to cut the photo in half, I recommend changing the orientation to portrait.
Again, you’ll probably want to avoid placing the horizon in the middle of the frame but the decision is up to you.
I personally feel that the composition in the photo below is stronger than any of the photos above as it includes the most interesting parts of each photo.
The weather had changed slightly between photos, meaning that there was less uninteresting sky in the photo. This certainly helped towards finding the perfect balance between sky and ground.
It’s all about thinking it through and experimenting with what works for you.

High Horizon

Now that we’ve covered why you want to include a high or a low horizon, let’s have a look at some examples.
The high horizon in this photo was an obvious choice as the sky was particularly plain and uninteresting on the evening that I took this photo.
Realising this, I made a special effort to include the foreground a little bit more to strengthen my photo. I found these strong, jagged rocks which contrasted nicely with the sky while blending in with the colour of the photo.
Below is an extreme example of a high horizon – I chose to include it because it focuses the interest onto the subject and foreground below.
It makes it look as though the visual weight of the subject forces the camera down, at the same time keeping the photo stable by remaining straight across the top of the frame. There’s a lot going on in the lower half of this photo and the inclusion of the sky would have distracted from this.

Low Horizon

Photos of clouds from below can be pretty boring and rely heavily on being ‘pretty’ for attention. If you raise your angle, the clouds rely more on their shape and form to attract viewers.
Because I had a higher vantage point and the shape of the clouds was particularly interesting, I chose to include as much of them as possible, which meant using a lower horizon.
I included just enough of the ground to make the colour interesting and complimentary to the colour of the sky, while focusing most of the viewers attention towards the subject: the clouds.
This is an example of a very low horizon. I chose to take the photo this way not because I wanted to emphasis to be on the rather uninteresting sky, but because I wanted to focus on the dominance of the building.
With the horizon that low, the feeling of balance is lost which draws your attention towards the bold building standing on top of it. By removing many other potential features from the frame, you focus the attention onto one specific point – the building.

-----------------------------------------------------

Free Photography Ebook

Camera Basics Series: Shooting Modes Explained – Free Quick Guide

Download Your Free Guide Now →

There probably isn’t a more confusing and misunderstood topic on the camera side of photography than the shooting modes.

Shooting modes may be incredibly confusing to people just starting in photography; after all, there are so many letters and icons on that mode dial! What do these letters and icons mean?

Good question! And the sooner you understand them; the earlier your photography will improve and become more predictable.

This is what will be covered in this guide:

• Auto Mode
• Program Mode
• Shutter Speed Priority Mode
• Aperture Priority Mode
• Manual Mode
• The differences in the Nikon and Canon mode dials
• A note on Scene Modes

There are those that believe that the manual mode is the only mode that a real photographer uses.

We don’t believe that. There are reasons that all of these different modes are available to photographers, even on the most professional level DSLR cameras.

Each mode has a purpose.

Are you ready to learn about them? Let’s go!

Photo Credit: Angela Fulks

Download Your Free Guide Now → 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 

How to Use Photo Stacking for Daytime Long Exposures

By Peter Dam | Photography-Raw 

Have you ever tried photographing dreamy landscapes in the daytime with smooth clouds? Then you know the challenges of getting the money shot with just one click.

But what if I tell you that you can achieve that perfect shot through photo stacking? Let’s find out more about what it is and what you can do with it when shooting long exposure photography!

 

What Is The Purpose of Stacking Photos?

The term stacking simply means combining several photos to create a “master image.”

There are several forms of stacking. The first one is called focus stacking. It combines several pictures with different focus points to create one final image that’s sharp from the foreground to the background.

The second type of stacking is for panorama. Instead of laying one image on top of another, it ‘stitches’ photos side by side to create a panoramic picture.

Finally, the third form of stacking is for long exposure photography which we will be learning today. It combines your image files to enhance anything from moving clouds to waves in the sea.

Each of the stacking methods we mentioned in this article involves a two-step process. The first part is taking a series of pictures, ideally in RAW format.

And the second part is combining them in post-production. The ideal editing suite for this purpose is Photoshop, and that’s what we will be using this tutorial.

How to Create Perfect Daytime Long-Exposures

When doing long-exposure photography, a lot of problems can easily ruin your shot.

A lot of things can quickly go wrong with an exposure time around 4 minutes. You could encounter all sorts of issues from false light to camera shake. Not to mention vignetting and image noise (hot pixels, thermal noise)!

But by dividing the shot into several shorter exposures, you can overcome most of the issues. You can stack your files together in Adobe Photoshop to achieve that one perfect shot.

Photo stacking is not a technique for every situation. But sometimes stacking your long-exposures is the only way to get a good shot. It’s imperative to know when you need it during shooting.

When to Use Photo Stacking

False Light

At night when the light is limited, you can do 2 or 4 minutes exposures without using neutral density filters.

But during the day, you’ll often have too much light available for long-exposure photography. Using slow shutter speeds in the daytime with a ten-stop ND-filter might still result in an overexposed shot.

Also by narrowing down aperture too much you can encounter problems because of diffraction effect (mostly over f/16).

Photo stacking your daytime long-exposure photos ensures you get correctly exposed shots. You’ll find this especially useful if you don’t own a ten-stop neutral density filter or more.

Camera Shake

Besides false light, shaking is the most common reason for failed shots in long-exposure photography.

Since your camera shutter stays open for a few minutes, any movement it records will register as light streaks or motion blur. That’s the same reason why clouds in the sky or the waves in the ocean look wispy.

But small vibrations can also cause motion blur in your camera. Even a breeze or a gentle nudge could easily ruin your shots.

So remember to take the camera strap off your camera while shooting long-exposure. It acts as a sail in the wind and causes shaking to the tripod and camera.

You should also make sure the ground is sturdy enough to support your tripod. Use a remote trigger or self-timer for hands-free operation. Remember that even touching the shutter button could quickly introduce motion blur.

User Error

Of course, we also need to factor in all the unforeseen hiccups that can ruin a great long-exposure shot.

Regardless of whether it’s daytime or night, another common mistake is merely forgetting your remote. Without it, you can only safely go up to 30 seconds, which is the longest exposure time your camera allows.

Bulb mode without a remote requires that you press the shutter all the time. And that’s definitely a no-go if you want to avoid camera shake.

So before you venture out, make sure you have all the equipment you need. In this case, a tripod, ND filters, and your remote trigger will be necessary.

To avoid user error, you should also practice this taking long-exposure images before doing a big project. Becoming familiar with the process allows you to avoid mistakes and even troubleshoot issues.

How to Use Photo Stacking for Long-Exposure Photos

We learned a lot about the various issues you may encounter when doing long exposures. Now the question is: How do you take photos for stacking?

In this section, we’ll show you how to do it on the field and how to blend the exposures afterwards in Photoshop.

Setting Up Your Camera

At the location, set up your gear as usual. Make sure your camera settings and ND-filters produce the correct exposure. Your histogram should peak just over the middle to the right when using an exposure time of 30 seconds.

To get the effect of a 4-minute shot, aim for eight good shots, each at 30 seconds (8 x 30 seconds = 4 minutes).

Feel free to take a few test photos to ensure you get the best exposure. Even though you’re stacking pictures, it would help a lot if all the shots you have are usable in the first place.

Get some extra exposures just in case some of them get blurred due to camera shake from a sudden wind gust or bypassing bus. You can leave out a particular shot from your sequence in the photo stacking process.

As you can see, the first part of this process is quite simple. If you’ve done long exposure photography before, this isn’t any different.

The part that you’ll need to learn is how to combine all those pictures in Photoshop. Now, let’s go through the process below.

Image by Pixabay

Post-Processing in Photoshop

Processing your set of daytime long-exposure shots is relatively easy.

From Lightroom, open up your set of shorter long-exposures as layers in Photoshop. You do this in Lightroom’s grid-mode by selecting all the images you want to combine into one exposure.

Right-click and choose Edit In → Edit in Adobe Photoshop.

Don’t select Open as Layers in Photoshop since it’s for focus stacking macro photos. This process is different.

 

When the images finish loading into Photoshop, go to File → Scripts → Load Files into Stack.

In the appearing dialogue, choose Add Open Files to make the set of images appear under files to use for stacking.

Remember to check Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images and Create Smart Object after Loading Layers.

Click OK to begin the blending process. It usually takes some time for Photoshop to create a single Smart Object from all of the exposures.

 

Next, go to the menu Layer → Smart Objects → Stack Mode → Mean. Doing so makes Photoshop automatically blend the images in the stack into a smooth, long-exposure. The goal is to make it look like you took everything as a single long-exposure image.

At this point, you don’t need the layer to be a Smart Object anymore. Keeping it this way would prevent you from using a brush tool, for example. You should convert it by right-clicking on the layer and choose Rasterize Layer.

Next, process the image as you would for a standard daytime long-exposure or any other image. To get the best results, use selective sharpening of the areas in your photo that are not moving.

Long-exposures taken during daytime often have a lot of large white spots with clouds or silky soft water. Applying sharpening to these areas can cause an unwanted grainy look.

The Result

In this particular shot, I had to put my tripod halfway into the water to get the composition I wanted. But it resulted in a blurry 4 min. exposure. The small waves likely transferred a little shaking from the tripod to the camera.

However, by dividing the shot into eight exposures, I got several exposures that were usable for photo stacking.

Daytime long-exposure photography can give you some beautiful and creative results. But it requires patience and practice.

Using photo stacking can save you a lot of time and help you get awesome shots that otherwise might not be possible.

If you’re interested in more great photography ideas, Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Photo Ephemeris

DesktopiOSBlogSupportSearch

The Photographer's Ephemeris^®

It's all about the light.

See how the light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth.

Photo Ephemeris helps you plan outdoor photography in natural light. It's a map-based Sun, Moon, and Milky Way calculator. Plan your shot with perfect precision.

Sign up for freeAlready have an account? Sign in

“ One of the most useful apps for any nature photographer. ”

“ Head and shoulders above the crowd is The Photographer’s Ephemeris. Odd name, great app. ”