- Hello, I'm Tim Grey and today I'm gonna talk
about multiple exposures.
One of the things I find interesting
about multiple exposures is
that in many respects, it takes me back
to my early days in photography
when, like many photographers,
I started out with film.
And creating multiple exposures was interesting
and fun and also very frustrating at times
because you never really knew for sure
what you were going to end up with
when you created two or more exposures
on the same piece of film.
With digital, that process can be even more enjoyable
and much less frustrating
because we have a lot more flexibility
in terms of how we blend multiple images together.
I'm gonna show you a couple of different options
at making multiple exposures using Photoshop,
couple variations on a theme here.
I'm gonna start off with a couple of images.
I have this photo captured in Monument Valley.
And a photo of myself somewhere
in the desert Southwest as well.
And I thought it might be interesting
to blend the two images together
to really put me into that scene
that I was photographing.
And so the first step is to create a layered document.
I want to take two photos and combine them
into the same image within Photoshop
as individual layers.
And the easiest to do that is to start off
in Adobe Bridge.
So here in Bridge, I'll click on the thumbnail
for the first image that I want
to combine into a multiple exposure.
And then I'll hold the Shift key
on the keyboard and click on the next image
so that I have selected, in this case, two images.
Now, I can do up to the menu bar
and choose tools, followed by Photoshop,
and then I want to choose the option
to load files into Photoshop layers.
I'll go ahead and choose that command
and these images will then be opened
in Photoshop, but not as individual files.
They'll actually be combined automatically
into a single layered document.
So, you can see here the image of myself.
And if you take a look at the layers panel,
you'll see that that's just one of two layers.
So on top, I have the image of myself
and down below, the image of Monument Valley.
So if I turn off the visibility
for the layer of me, you'll see Monument Valley.
But right now, the two images are essentially
literally sitting one on top of the other.
And if you think of photographic prints,
for example, you set one down and put another
on top of it.
The top photo simply covers up the layer down below.
But we can also blend the two images together,
or multiple images
if we've created a more complicated document.
And the way we do that, or one of the ways we can do that is
with a blend mode.
Literally designed to blend multiple image layers together.
So I'll re-enable the visibility
for that top layer and then I'm going
to go through the blend modes and see
what works well to blend these two images together.
And I'm working with the top image
because a blend mode causes an image
to blend with the layers down below it.
So if I change the blend mode for the underlying layer,
that would in this case have no effect at all.
So with that top layer selected,
I'll go up to the pop up that has a default value of normal.
That's the blend mode pop up,
near the top of the layers panel.
And one cool new feature in a recent update
to Lightroom is that if I simply hover my mouse
over the name of each blend mode,
I'll get a preview in real time
for the effect it will create.
So you can see that there are a variety
of different and interesting effects.
For a relatively traditional effect,
a multiple exposure effect, you'll usually want
to use either the multiply or the screen blend modes.
Multiply is like stacking two slides one on top of the other
and the screen blend mode is like projecting two images
onto the same projection stream.
In other words, multiply will darken the overall result.
And screen will lighten the overall result.
Quite frankly, either will probably work well.
If you use multiply, you're probably going
to need to lighten up the image a little bit.
If you use screen, you're probably going
to need to darken it down a little bit.
And so you could choose
which one gives you the better starting point.
Here I think multiply represents a good starting point
for this basic effect.
I'll go ahead and choose multiply.
And now I have a multiple exposure effect,
but it's a bit on the dark side.
So I'll go ahead and an adjustment layer.
So at the bottom of the layers panel,
I'll click the add adjustment layer button.
And I'll just use curves in this case.
Adding a curves adjustment layer,
and then dragging that curve upward a little bit
in order to brighten the photo.
And so you can see that I
now have a multiple exposure effect
where I've positioned myself right on top
of a scene that I had photographed.
And you'll see that there is actually a blending
of both images together.
So you can see the texture of the sky,
for example, coming through me in this case.
So that's one way
to make a multiple exposure composite image
through the use of a blend mode.
Let's take a look at another option,
a little bit more complicated approach
that also gives you some more flexibility
in terms of how you interpret the multiple exposure.
In this case, I have a photo of the Statue of Liberty
as well as a scene of the Manhattan skyline.
And I want to blend them together.
So, once again, I'll select both images.
I will click on the thumbnail for the first image
and then hold the Shift key and click
on the second image here in order to select both of those.
And then I'll go up to the tools menu,
and choose Photoshop, followed
by load files into Photoshop layers.
Once I choose that command, once again,
the images will be sent to Photoshop
and combined into a single image with multiple layers.
And so you can see on the layers panel
that I have my Manhattan scene layer
up on my top and the Statue of Liberty layer down below.
But, I actually want to have the Statue of Liberty layer
on top because that's the first layer I'm going
to work with here and so I can reorder the layers
on the layers panel simply by dragging and dropping.
So I'll point my mouse at the image,
the thumbnail of the Statue of Liberty.
And then click and drag upward
until I see that blue line appear, indicating
that that will be the destination when I release the mouse.
So I will release the mouse and drop that layer up above.
And here, instead of using just a blend mode,
I'm going to use a layer mask so
that I can block portions of the image
and only see the rest of the image.
So I'll create a selection as the basis of that layer mask.
I'll just use the magic wand tool
and the sky will be very easy
to create a selection of in this case.
SO I'll click into the sky and,
as if by magic, with the magic wand tool,
I get a selection of that sky in a single click.
But since it's the statue that I want
to keep in this case, I actually want the inverse
of that selection.
And so I'll go up to the select menu
and then choose inverse.
That will invert the selection.
So now I have a selection of the Statue of Liberty.
And then I'm going to add a layer mask
so that I can only the statue itself.
I'll go ahead and click the add layer mask button,
the circle inside of a rectangle
down at the bottom of the layers panel.
And you can see that now I'm only able
to see the Statue of Liberty
with the Manhattan skyline showing down below.
Well, I actually only want to see the Manhattan skyline
within the outline of the Statue of Liberty.
So I want that same layer mask to apply
to the skyline down below.
I can create a selection based on that layer mask
by holding the Control key on Windows
or the Command key on Macintosh
while clicking on the thumbnail for the layer mask.
You'll see that that loads a selection
into the image based on the layer mask.
I can then select the underlying layer,
the Manhattan scene layer, and once again,
click the button to add a layer mask.
Of course, now I'm only seeing the Manhattan skyline
within the shape of the Statue of Liberty.
But the Statue of Liberty is still covering up
that underlying image.
I'll start here by turning off the visibility
for the Statue of Liberty layer.
And now you see that I have the Manhattan skyline viewed
through the Statue of Liberty's shape.
I have transparency all around that.
I might like to add a new layer to fill with white.
So I could hold the Control key on Windows
or the Command key on Macintosh
while clicking on the create new layer button,
the blank sheet paper icon at the bottom
of the layers panel, and that will create a new layer
down below the currently active layer.
So below my Manhattan scene layer.
I have my colors set to the defaults of black and white.
And so I can press Control + Delete
or Command + Delete in order to fill
with the background color.
So now I have the Manhattan skyline
through the outline of the Statue of Liberty.
I could also combine that other blend mode effect
if I want to.
If I'd like to have a little bit of the texture
of the Statue of Liberty overlaid
on top of the skyline here.
So I'll go back to my Statue of Liberty layer
and make it visible once again
by clicking the box to the left of the thumbnail.
And I'm gonna start off with a blend mode
so that I'm blending this image with the scene down below.
I'll go ahead and click the blend mode pop up.
And it looks like multiply will work pretty well
in terms of adding texture.
It's darkening the scene up too much,
but I'm going to change that with an approach here
that will allow me to have just a little bit
of that texture showing through the background image.
And that is to reduce the opacity
for my Statue of Liberty layer.
So I'll go to the opacity slider here.
I can actually just point my mouse
at the word opacity and use the scrubby slider feature.
I'll just click on the word opacity
and drag over toward the left to reduce the visibility
of that Statue of Liberty layer.
I just want a tiny bit of texture to show through.
In this case, you can see, for example,
the robes of the Statue of Liberty showing
in the sky area in particular.
So, as you can see, using a layer mask so
that I'm only seeing an image in specific areas enables me
to create a bit more complicated variation
on a multiple exposure.
In this case, still using that blend mode trick
to combine those multiple images.
(upbeat music)