5/03/2011

Overlaying Images

 

Today’s tip is how to make those ‘cool’ looking photo’s where you have the same object (person) duplicated several times in on photo… Understand?.

Hopefully now you do .

 

I’ll explain how to do this now, well I’ll try my best.

 

First thing is you’ll need a Tripod for this, Either that or somehow balance your camera on something, It’s vital your camera stays COMPLETELY still between each photo.

 

You also need to make sure the lighting stays the same too, Otherwise your images will be harder to blend together/look all different.

 

So, set your angle up and select the self timer option or use a shutter release button… or if your lucky and have a friend get them to take the pictures .

 

The idea is to take the first photo of the scene without you there, then take however many more you want  with yourself in the picture doing different poses.

 

You have to remeber not to really overlap yourself too much other wise it won’t look that special.

 

Here are the pictures I took to get my final image.

The first blank one:

The second one with me posing:

Third of me posing:

Last one of me again:

Now you understand that the camera cannot move at all otherwise the angle’s will be different making it harder to blend them together in Photoshop, Which we will move on to now….

So now we have our images load them into Photoshop:

Now copy all of the images into the first image so they are all layers:

Now select your top layer, in my case its my ‘Fourth’ layer and grab the rubber tool:

Depending on your image select the appropriate brush size and hardness.

Now lower the opacity to 50%, This will help you see where to rub out but showing the layer below abit.

Now rub out where you can see the second person but be careful of any overlapping parts, as you can see my 2nd knee is covering my 1st shoe :S so you’d have to be careful not to rub around that.

Now the good thing about taking that first photo is that it saves you being really careful using the rubber tool, As when you rub around the person is just shows the layer beneath so you can do it roughly and still works well.

Now make the opacity back to 100% and select the layer below:

Tick the little eye , this will just ‘hide’ it as we don’t need to see it any more and its blocking us from seeing the layers below.

The select the top layer again and repeat the step above… lower the opacity to 50% and rub out the 3rd ‘person’ as if your painting them in.

After that simply click the blank space where the little eye used to be on the second layer and hey presto, You should have all three versions blended in:

Now just go to ‘File>Save As’ and save your image as a JPEG or whatever you desire.

 

Thats it!

Hope this helped and encourages you to give it a shot, You don’t need a fancy camera either!.

Share your versions below in the comments Or if your stuck/still confused just leave a comment .

Thanks

Dan.