How to create stunning double exposure portraits.
Use Adobe Photoshop to blend photos into a striking image that’s artful, moving, and exciting.
Double exposure photography is an easy and creative technique that provides endless possibilities for invention. Double exposure is the process of overlaying two images on top of one another to create surreal, evocative, and visually compelling scenes. Edit your photos in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom with these pro tips and get to creating in no time.
The potential of double exposure portraits.
Double exposure allows you to elevate portraits, take stunning close-ups and superimpose images that evoke movement, personality, or stories. You could highlight the same face in two different positions to create a sense of transience, overlay images of nature to create a new type of abstract portrait or combine it with different backgrounds to tell a story.
In the case of double exposure portraits, your “base photo” would be the portrait itself. Make sure this image is focused and fully in the frame. Your “layer photo” would be that photo you’ll superimpose on top of the portrait to create the double exposure effect. Make sure this one is evenly exposed so that it easily blends with your base image. Then comes the really fun part — editing them together.
How to create a digital double exposure portrait.
Though traditionally a technique created by exposing the same frame of film more than once, digital photography and editing software make creating striking double exposures fast and easy. Play around with these Photoshop features to start your creative process:
- Transparency: Superimposing two images requires some level of transparency to ensure you’re able to see details and how they blend together. When you stack your images, experiment with the transparency and opacity of the top image to see how different levels of light blocking change the overall look and feel.
- Blending: Merge your images seamlessly with blending controls. Apply evenly throughout or test out how different levels of blending in different areas affects the overall look of your composition.
- Layer Masking: This is how you hide different parts of a layer, especially those parts that might not seamlessly impose over your second image. This gives you flexibility in how the images blend together.
Remember, this is a creative process, and the possibilities are truly endless. Explore what more you can do with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom as you begin to edit for yourself.