In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to easily create
the double exposure effect in Photoshop.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Photoshop Training Channel.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me in Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, we're going to use adjustment layers and blending modes to easily create
the double exposure effect in Photoshop.
All the techniques in this video are non-destructive, which means that you can always come back
and make any adjustments that you like.
We're going to be very organized when building this effect, but it's going to be an efficient
workflow that allows you to easily make any edits and swap out the images if you like.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to use this image of this man here.
He is in a white background.
This works better if you have a white background on your image.
If you don't have a white background, I'm going to show you what to do in a moment.
I'm going to bring in the second image that I'm going to use and this image is an Adobe
Stock image and I have it in a creative cloud library, so I'm going to click and drag that
image on to my working composition.
I'm going close the Libraries panel and I'm going to zoom out by holding Alt, scrolling
down on the mouse wheel; that is option on the Mac and I'm going to click and drag the
corner handle to increase the size of this image.
So, now, I have two images--this man image and I'll just call this second image "City."
The easiest way to create the double exposure effect is by selecting the layer on top and
simply switching the blending mode to Lighten.
And as you can see, we already have a convincing double exposure effect.
Obviously, this doesn't give us a lot of control and this is what this tutorial is going to
be about--about using this principle, but using adjustment layers that give us a lot
more control.
Now, before we continue, I just want to point out what to do in case you don't have an image
with a white background.
The first step is to create a solid color.
Make it white and put that at the very bottom.
Then, take your image and use the Quick Selection Tool to make a selection around the person
in your image.
And obviously, I'm not going to take my time here, but let's just assume that this was
a good selection.
You can, then, click on the new layer mask icon and you'll have your person in a white
background.
But, anyway, that's one of the methods that you can use to have a person on a white background,
so I'm going to delete this layer mask since we don't need it and I'm going to delete the
solid color as well.
So now I have this city and this man, and the city layer, we're going to set that to
Normal.
Then, I'm going to create a new group by clicking on the New Group icon and I'm going to put
the group at the bottom of the layer stack, and I'm going to call it "bottom image."
And this is where we're going to put the image that's going to be at the bottom and we're
going to need two adjustment layers in that group.
First, we're going to need a black and white adjustment layer.
Now, this step is not necessary, but I'm going to delete the layer mask simply because we
don't need it and I don't need it distracting us, but you can leave it there if you want
to.
I'm also going to create an Exposure Adjustment Layer and, again, you don't need to delete
the layer mask, but I'm going to.
So, we have a black and white adjustment layer and an exposure adjustment layer inside of
that group.
With the group selected, I'm going to press Ctrl J, that's Command J on the Mac, to duplicate
that group.
A little side note: If you're following with Photoshop CS6 or older, Ctrl J does not duplicate
groups.
You need to click and drag the group on to the new layer icon to duplicate it.
But, anyway, we have this group selected and we're going to change the name to "Top image"
and we're going to click and drag the images to the corresponding group.
So, I'm going to select the man layer and I'm going to click and drag it to the bottom
of the bottom image group and I'm going to do the same thing for the city, but in the
top image group.
Make sure that they are inside those groups.
If you collapse the groups, you shouldn't be able to see the layers, so just make sure
you put them in there.
And that's another way of double checking and disabling the eye icon to disable the
visibility of the group.
So now, we're going to select the "top image" group and we're going to do the same thing.
We're going to go into the Blending Modes and select Lighten.
So, now, we have that same effect, so we can click and drag that city around using the
Move Tool and place it accordingly.
In this case, something like this will work and we can continue working with each individual
group.
Now, the reason we created a Black and White Adjustment Layer and an Exposure Adjustment
Layer, it's because our final effect is going to be roughly a black and white effect.
So this adjustment layer makes it easy for us to make a black and white image and also,
control it.
And the exposure helps us, obviously, control the luminance values of the image.
The Lighten Blending Mode tells Photoshop to look at the two layers--the city layer
and the man layer--and to keep the pixel that is the lightest.
So, with the Exposure Adjustment Layer, we can click and drag the Exposure down to -20,
which turns every pixel black, but no pixel will show just because every pixel on the
layer below it is brighter than the pixels on top.
That is what the Lighten Blending Mode is doing.
If I click and drag the Exposure Adjustment Layer to the right, you'll see that it completely
makes the image white and that is because all the pixels on the image are now white,
or most of the pixels.
And obviously, white is bright as in anything else below the layer.
So, you can use this Exposure Adjustment Layer to control how the pixels between each layer
blends and you can do that for the bottom image as well.
If you drag the Exposure Adjustment to negative values, then the background becomes dark,
therefore, it starts disappearing and the city starts showing.
So, you probably don't want to drag this to the left.
You're mostly going to be dragging it to the right to make the adjustments.
Another reason that we're using the Black and White Adjustment Layer is that we can
control the original luminance values of the image based on its original color.
So, what that means is that if you recall, his jacket was blue, so with the Black and
White Adjustment Layer selected, we can adjust the blue slider and make that darker.
That means that those pixels are going to become invisible and the background will show
through.
The opposite will happen if we'll drag it to the right, more of the jacket shows.
So now, you can selectively target colors and adjust their luminance so that you can
control how it blends in the double exposure.
Obviously, the skin tones are in the yellows and reds, so we can control his skin tones
using these sliders.
And by the way, the Lighten Blending Mode works with Luminance, so that means that you
can use any adjustment layer.
I just showed the Exposure Adjustment Layer because it's one of the easiest to use.
You're just dragging the slider left or right, but you could also use an adjustment layer
like Curves, that also controls luminosity and control the image that way.
You could also use a Levels Adjustment Layer and control the luminance values of the layer
that way and control how it blends with the layer below it, and you can do that, of course,
with the bottom image as well.
So, keep that in mind.
You don't necessarily have to use an Exposure Adjustment Layer.
You can stack different types of adjustment layers on top of this.
For example, you can even use a Curves Adjustment Layer and make an adjustment, and with the
layer mask selected, click on the Invert button.
That makes everything black.
It makes everything in this adjustment disappear, but you can bring it back by painting with
white using the Brush Tool.
And I'm bringing back some of the detail that this Curves Adjustment Layer created.
So, that's another way of working with multiple adjustment layers to control the luminosity
and therefore, control the blend of the top image using the Lighten Blending Mode.
And I think that by this point, you have a pretty good understanding of how these adjustment
layers work in conjunction with the Lighten Blending Mode and the top image group.
So, what I'm going to do now is show you a couple of other tricks to further enhance
this image.
And of course, this is a very stylized image and one of the techniques I like using to
further enhance the effect of this image is create a Gradient Map and go into this gear
icon and select Photographic Toning, press OK, and the one on the top left is one of
the ones that I like.
You could use any one of these to create a color effect.
And by the way, the reason this is not working the way I'm intending it to is because I created
the Gradient Map inside the top image group.
I need to click and drag that out and then you can see how this works.
So, there it is.
This is the first one, second one and I think that all the ones in this top row work pretty
well for the effect that I'm going for in this example, but you can try any one of these
other color toning gradients.
So, I personally like this first one and the fourth one.
For this example, I'm just going to use the first one.
So this is the effect here, before and after.
Another thing that you can do is if you want to bring in color, you can either disable
the Black and White Adjustment Layers and see what effect that gets you, or disable
one and leave the other one on, whichever one gives you the effect that you like the
best.
Or, you can take a layer like the city layer, press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to duplicate
it.
Click and drag that outside of the group, change the Blending Mode to Color and you
have a different effect there.
You could also go into Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur, and zoom out so that you could see what
you're doing, and just blur it out.
All the detail is gone and just press OK.
It's not a dramatic effect, but you can see the before and after there.
So, I'm going to double click on the Hand Tool to zoom in and we can do that again,
before and after.
It's a subtle effect, but I think it makes it look better.
So you can decide whether you want to use the color or just a gradient map.
That's totally up to you.
What I'm going to do now is show you one final thing that you can do to enhance this effect.
So I'm going to select the Gradient Map, hold Shift and click on the bottom image group
to select everything in between.
I'm going to right-click to the right side of any of those layers and click on Convert
to Smart Object.
Now, that is only a single smart object and I can go into Filter, Camera Raw Filter.
Now one thing that you're going to see is that the canvas here is larger than the canvas
that we're working with in the composite.
You can see part of the background here and these transparent pixels over here.
I'm going to cancel that and I'm going to show you how to avoid that.
So, I'm going to press Ctrl Alt Z, Command Option Z on the Mac, to undo, and we're going
to get our layers back.
So the problem is this layer here.
If I zoom out by pressing the Z key and then holding Alt and clicking, you'll see that
this layer is outside of the canvas.
So, I'm going to click on the Move Tool and you can see where that layer is.
So, what I can do to fix that is press Ctrl A, that's Command A on the Mac, to make a
selection around the canvas, then click on the New Layer Mask icon.
And I'm going to press Ctrl A, Command A on the Mac, one more time, and I want to open
up the top image group and select the other city layer because they are both the same
size and we're in the same position in the canvas, and click on the Layer Mask icon as
well.
I'm going to collapse this group.
I'm going to click on the bottom image group, hold Shift, and click on the top layer, and
then put everything into a smart object.
Now, if I go into Filter, Camera Raw Filter, we only see the canvas that we're working
with, that is because the Layer Mask are defining how large the canvas is inside that smart
object.
We can then come in and stylize this image.
I'm going to zoom in just so that we could see what we're doing a little bit better,
so at 100%, you should be okay.
And the two things that I would do to this image to stylize it will be to increase the
sharpening and go to the Fx icon, adjust the Dehaze, give it a little more Dehaze so it
makes the image pop, and also add some grain into the image.
And we're also adding grain to the background, which I think looks good in this example,
so that's before and after, and I'm going to zoom back out to 100%, and this is what
our image is looking like now.
You could, also, if you wanted to adjust the contrast and also clarity, but that's totally
up to you.
I'm going to press OK and I'm going to double click on the Hand Tool to see the image, so
that's before and after.
So obviously, you can adjust that accordingly if you think the effect is too strong.
You have this icon here that you can double click and bring the opacity down of that effect.
So, zero is just like having no effect, 100% is obviously the effect at 100%, and you can
adjust it to any opacity in-between, of course.
And you can always double click on the smart object to go in there and edit it.
So, for example, you can click and drag the city copy to the top and it brings back the color.
You can close the smart object, save it, and the Camera Raw effects that we applied are
also shown when we enable the color.
If you see some yellow on the background, that is because the gradient map is enabling
that, so we can disable the gradient map, Save to Smart Object once again, and the image
looks much better.
Let me know what you thought about this workflow and what you think about this method of creating
the double exposure effect.
If you create your own double exposure effect, don't forget to share it on Instagram with
the hashtag #ptcvids.
I often look for that hashtag to see what you're all up to.
And that's it for this tutorial.
If this is your first time at the Photoshop Training Channel, don't forget to click on
the Subscribe button.
Thank you so much for watching and I will talk to you again next time.