How To Create The Color Double Exposure Effect In Photoshop
Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to create the color double exposure effect in
Photoshop.
Okay, so let's get right to it.
We're going to be working with these two images—this picture of this woman and this background.
These are Adobe stock images.
I have links for them right below this video in the description.
Also, just so you know, I'm working on a document that's 1920 by 1080, and what we're going
to do first is set up the file so that it's easier to work with.
We're going to be, obviously, creating a double exposure image with color.
And if we start organizing things from the beginning, things are going to be much easier
later.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new group by clicking on this icon here,
then, I'm going to create a new adjustment layer, and that's going to be an Exposure
Adjustment Layer.
And this is, of course, going to control the exposure of our images.
I'm going to double click on the layer to rename it and I'll just call it Exposure.
Also, we don't need a layer mask, so I'm going to right click on the layer mask and select
Delete Layer Mask.
Next, I'm going to create an adjustment layer that's going to control the color of our image.
So I'm going to create a new solid color adjustment.
The color is not important now, so I'm going to leave it at black, press OK, and I'm going
to do the same.
I'm going to rename the layer, in this case, Color, then delete the layer mask.
I'm going to rename the group and I'm simply going to call it Photo.
And I actually need two groups, one for each photo.
I can press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to Duplicate the group.
If you're using a version of Photoshop that's older than CS6, you will have to click in
the group and drag it into the new layer icon to duplicate it.
I'm going to rename the group on top and I'm going to call it Photo Top.
This is going to be the group that's going to control the photo on top, and the group
in the bottom; you guessed it, Photo Bottom.
And now I'm going to drag the images into those groups, so the woman here will be on
the group on top.
So I'm going to click and drag that into that group, and that's going to place her on top
of the group.
I want her to be at the bottom, so I'm going to click and drag the layer down.
If you're moving a layer into a group, and you want that layer to go straight into the
bottom, hold Shift as you click and drag, and it will place the layer at the bottom.
So, now, we have both layers where they should be.
Now everything looks black and that's because I forgot one step, which is the color.
I needed to switch the Blend Mode to Color.
So let me go ahead and do that on both layers here and now we see the girl.
Then, on the Photo Top group, I'm going to change the Blend Mode to Lighten, and that
already is going to create a double exposure effect.
If you just want to work on a black and white double exposure effect, you can just come
into the Exposure Adjustment Layer that we created here, click on it.
On the Properties panel, just adjust the exposure and notice how the image appears and reappears,
depending on the level of the exposure.
You can do the same thing for the photo at the bottom, the background, and you can adjust
the exposure accordingly.
But in this tutorial, we're also going to be working with color.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the Color Adjustment Layer here on top
for the woman.
I'm going to double click on it and I'm going to choose a color, and the color that I want
is red.
So I can simply come in here, and type 255 and make sure that green and blue have 0,
and press OK, and that's going to turn the image red.
Then I'm going to go into the background color adjustment layer here and I'm going to double
click on it, and I want cyan.
We have cyan here.
Notice that red and cyan are directly opposite to each other.
You want to try to use colors that are opposites of each other, so they pop and stand out.
So, in this case, red and cyan are opposites, and I'm just going to type in 100, zero for
magenta, zero for yellow, and zero for black.
If you're wondering why we did zero here and 255 here is because CMYK we're working with
percentages, and with RGB we're working with different levels.
We have a total of 256, including zero, so that's 255.
I'm going to press OK and the image is not looking very good at the moment, but we do
have the Exposure Adjustment Layer to help us the way this looks.
So I'm just going to start adjusting the exposure and notice how, as I bring this down, we get
a better image of the woman, and I'm going to do the same thing for the background.
And you can play with that accordingly until you find something that matches.
At this point, I'm going to just work a little bit on the compositing, so I'm going to click
on the woman layer here, press Ctrl T, Command T to Transform and scale, so I'm going to
click on the corner handle there, hold Alt, Option on the Mac, as I'm clicking and dragging
to scale from the center.
And then, maybe, I can move her around and place her somewhere on my image, maybe scale
it up a little bit more.
And I'm going to press Enter when I'm happy with her placement, and I'm going to scale
the background as well.
So Ctrl T, Command T on the Mac, shift Alt, click and drag from the corner handle, and
I'm going to use the Space Bar to pan as I'm scaling, and click and drag this over to the
left.
I want those lines to lead to her face, so maybe somewhere around this area here.
Then, I'm going to press Enter.
So the image is looking much better, but we still need to work a little bit with the exposures
on both the foreground and background.
So I'm going to adjust them even further till I find something that I like.
Also, if you find using the slider complicated, simply drag it all the way to the left, and
just use the opacity, if you think that's a little bit easier for you.
So you can do either/or.
Leave the Opacity at 100 and adjust the slider, or bring the exposure to -20 and adjust the
Opacity, so whatever is easiest for you.
I'm just going to stick with adjusting the exposure slider.
Also, a quick tip with the slider, if you have a mouse, you can use the mouse wheel
to increase or decrease the exposure incrementally, so I'm going really, really slow here as you
can see, or you can click and drag, of course.
But, anyway, we're going to just adjust this a little bit better here, and maybe the background
again.
And I don't want to spend too much time just because this is all subjective.
This looks good enough for now, so we're going to move forward.
The next thing I'm going to show you is you can actually adjust what areas of the image
show by creating a black and white adjustment layer right above each image.
So I'm going to click on the woman layer here and I'm going to add a black and white adjustment
layer, right above this woman layer here.
And I'm adding a lot of layers, so things may get a little confusing.
So what I'm going to do to make things easier for you to see is I'm just going to click
on the group, right click on it, and then, choose red as a color.
So all these layers are red and all these layers will be blue.
This is only to help me label all the layers.
It doesn't affect the outcome of the image at all.
So, back at the black and white adjustment layer that we just created, we can adjust
these sliders, and adjust how different colors in the image come through.
So I can bring the reds down and start showing a little bit of the background.
If we drag this holder to the right, we really don't see the background, so we want to see
more of that background, mixing it with her face, and we can adjust these colors accordingly,
until we find something that works.
I'm probably going to drag the blues all the way to the right because I want to get more
of the background here and, maybe, this cyan as well.
We're getting more of the background here by her sweater.
I'm going to do the same thing with the background.
So I'm going to click on the background, click on Black and White to create a black and white
adjustment layer, and I can do the same thing.
I can start adjusting the luminosity values of the background to create a better double
exposure effect.
At this point, the only thing that you need to do is go back and refine either the exposure,
the color, or the black and white adjustment layers on either of the groups just to get
a better result.
And that's pretty much it for this tutorial.
What I recommend you do now is adjust the colors.
Use different colors, experiment, and see what works.
Just keep in mind that if you change the colors, you probably will have to go in and adjust
the exposure adjustment layer, and also, the Black and White adjustment layers, but it's
not a big deal.
If you create an image using this tutorial or any of my tutorials, feel free to post
it on Instagram with the hashtag #PTCvids.
Every so often I'll do a search, and if I find your image, I'll leave a comment.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
If you have any comments or questions, leave them down below.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.