Double exposure hit the art scene as one of the hottest trends ever to exist, but then never went away. However, it’s easy to see why the love for double exposure effects stood the test of time while other Photoshop trends fell away.
Double exposure creates captivating portraits using only a few tools and images in less than 15 minutes!
Let’s take a look at how to do a double exposure in Photoshop.
Inside this article
What Is Double Exposure
Double exposure is a technique that combines two or more images by layering one on top of another. Initially, double exposure was created using multiple exposures to create a single image.
However, the effect can now be easily recreated using basic Photoshop techniques. Two photos are layered over one another, then connected by adjusting the topmost layer’s layer mode, generally changing it to either Screen and Lighten.
While it eventually started to trend big among photographers and Photoshop users, double exposure has existed for years and in various mediums. Alfred Hitchcock often used double exposure in his films to convey all kinds of emotions or even introduce a hint of surrealism to a scene.
Double exposure effects still exist in modern cinema and, of course, modern-day photography, which we will learn the ins and outs of in today’s double exposure Photoshop tutorial.
Actionable Tips to Create a Double Exposure
Choose compelling images. When choosing stock, try and think about how one image will add to the other. Find exciting angles, play with symbolism, and focus on each image, bringing the best out of its counterpart. Merge the two photos in inventive ways, and try using more than one photo.
Experiment with exposure. When learning how to do a double exposure in Photoshop, there are no magic exposure settings. Every image will need different adjustments to both brightness and contrast. Use Brightness/Contrast, Curves, and Levels to adjust the exposure of photos. The general rule of thumb is, if you want an area of a portrait to show, make it bright. If you want the underlying image to show, make that area dark.
Experiment with layer modes. Double exposure Photoshop tutorials will often suggest using Screen. However, Lighten can also be used to great effect. It’s always worth playing with other layer modes to see how they react with each other, creating new and exciting results.
How to Do a Double Exposure in Photoshop
Step 1: Choose Two or More Stock Images
When starting our double exposure effect, you will need one portrait image and at least one other image that will merge with the portrait. Often, this is an environmental or cityscape image.
Today, we will be using a total of three images—one of a close-up portrait, one of some mountains, and one of a foggy forest. Images with large areas of white tend to work best.
Step 2: Extract the Main Image
Next, let’s extract our portrait image using Select Subject, or whatever your preferred method may be.
When extracting your image, no matter what method you choose, make sure to use Layer Masks, as we will be using the subject’s mask in future steps.
Once you are done extracting, create a white Color Fill layer below your subject.
If your portrait is already on a pure white background, then you can skip this step.
Step 3: Adjust Base Portrait
With the subject’s background masked out, we can do some basic layer adjusting to prepare for the double exposure effect.
First, we will go to Image > Adjustment > Hue Saturation and bring the Saturation down to -100. This will turn the image black and white.
Next, we will go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and bring in the left and right toggles. This will make the image darker, as well as add contrast.
My exact input levels were 20, 1.00, and 236. However, every image is different. I suggest using Smart either Objects or adjustment layers, so that you can readjust your image’s exposure if necessary.
Step 4: Align the Secondary Images
Create a new Group over your subject layer. Copy the layer mask from the subject onto the new Group by holding Alt, dragging, and dropping the layer mask.
We are going to place two environmental images into the group, firstly, a set of mountains. Don’t worry about placement for now.
Secondly, we are going to place a foggy forest. I flipped the forest upside down and set the layer mode to Lighten, so that it blends in with the mountains.
Step 5: Adjust Secondary Images
Now, we can make some basic adjustments to our secondary images, starting with creating a Black and White Gradient Map adjustment layer. Place the Gradient Map above both the mountains and forest layers, keeping it inside of the group.
Secondly, above the gradient Map layer, let’s create a Color Balance adjustment layer. Set the settings to Red -11, Green -8, and Blue +14 to add a slight tint of blue to our image.
Finally, if needed, you can adjust the contrast of your secondary images using Brightness/Contrast. I adjusted the mountain range by Brightness -41 and Contrast -12.
Step 6: Duplicate the Main Image
Let’s duplicate the main subject image and bring it above the group holding out environmental layers. Set the duplicate to Screen.
Step 7: Adjust the Duplicated Main Image’s Exposure
Now is where exposure comes into play. This is how to make a double exposure in Photoshop work.
Select the top subject layer, and adjust its Levels. My Levels ended up being 30, 0.89, and 155, resulting in very strong highlights and dark shadows.
Again the settings will change from image to image, with skin tone playing a significant part. Lighter skin tones will likely have to be darkened, while the highlights in darker skin tones will be brightened. We want the facial features to be distinct.
Step 8: Adjust the Final Composition
With our facial features set, we can go back and refine our final composition by moving around the environmental images to match our subject’s facial features better.
Try and line things up logically. Here, I like how the curve of the mountain matched the angle of the subject’s brow. I also made sure the highlights of the mountain matched the highlights of the face.
Step 9: Enhance Facial Features
After finalizing the composition, we can enhance our facial features, making sure they appear solid.
Let’s create two new layers. Set the first layer to Overlay and clip it into the upper subject layer. Use this layer to enhance the subject’s highlights. Paint whites on the area you want to make more prominent.
Secondly, there’s a layer set to Soft Light placed below the upper subject layer, but above the environmental group. Use this layer to paint black on areas of the face you want to appear more solid such as the eyes, nose, and lips. I also enhanced the eyebrows.
You can also use the black layer to hide any distracting details in the environmental layers.
Step 10: Final Masking
Then, we will finish our subject by masking out any details on them that may be distracting. In this example, I choose to remove the right eye, masking it out using a soft round brush.
I also masked out some of the chest highlights. In this example, turning off the original base subject layer resulted in a cleaner effect.
Step 11: Final Color Grade
Finally, we can bring the image together with a quick color grade with a single Curves adjustment layer. I increased the contrast using what is often called an “S” curve. Then I brought up the blues in the shadows while lowering the blues in the highlights, creating a blue and yellow duo-tone effect.
All color adjustments are optional, however, and can be easily changed from image to image.
Conclusion
That is how to do a double exposure in Photoshop! Double exposure is an incredibly versatile and inventive technique, giving you the ability to create an endless amount of compelling results. Once you have the basics down, try and switch things up. Play with exposures, layer modes, and layering multiple images over one another. There is more than one way to create a double exposure effect, and the more innovative you get, the better your results!
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About Abbey
Abbey Esparza is a mixed media artist whose composites are all based on photographs that undergo an intense treatment to transform them into the surreal, unusual, and macabre. She typically creates surreal themes, but is experienced in all different kinds of styles and genres, including child-friendly fantasy! She works with The Glorious Company, a content-marketing agency
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That again was no use: he but got another smile and a friendly look of the sort he no longer wanted. I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn, and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall." We have this great advantage in dealing with Plato—that his philosophical writings have come down to us entire, while the thinkers who preceded him are known only through fragments and second-hand reports. Nor is the difference merely accidental. Plato was the creator of speculative literature, properly so called: he was the first and also the greatest artist that ever clothed abstract thought in language of appropriate majesty and splendour; and it is probably to their beauty of form that we owe the preservation of his writings. Rather unfortunately, however, along with the genuine works of the master, a certain number of pieces have been handed down to us under his name, of which some are almost universally admitted to be spurious, while the authenticity of others is a question on which the best scholars are still divided. In the absence of any very cogent external evidence, an immense amount of industry and learning has been expended on this subject, and the arguments employed on both sides sometimes make us doubt whether the reasoning powers of philologists are better developed than, according to Plato, were those of mathematicians in his time. The176 two extreme positions are occupied by Grote, who accepts the whole Alexandrian canon, and Krohn, who admits nothing but the Republic;115 while much more serious critics, such as Schaarschmidt, reject along with a mass of worthless compositions several Dialogues almost equal in interest and importance to those whose authenticity has never been doubted. The great historian of Greece seems to have been rather undiscriminating both in his scepticism and in his belief; and the exclusive importance which he attributed to contemporary testimony, or to what passed for such with him, may have unduly biassed his judgment in both directions. As it happens, the authority of the canon is much weaker than Grote imagined; but even granting his extreme contention, our view of Plato’s philosophy would not be seriously affected by it, for the pieces which are rejected by all other critics have no speculative importance whatever. The case would be far different were we to agree with those who impugn the genuineness of the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Philêbus, and the Laws; for these compositions mark a new departure in Platonism amounting to a complete transformation of its fundamental principles, which indeed is one of the reasons why their authenticity has been denied. Apart, however, from the numerous evidences of Platonic authorship furnished by the Dialogues themselves, as well as by the indirect references to them in Aristotle’s writings, it seems utterly incredible that a thinker scarcely, if at all, inferior to the master himself—as the supposed imitator must assuredly have been—should have consented to let his reasonings pass current under a false name, and that, too, the name of one whose teaching he in some respects controverted; while there is a further difficulty in assuming that his existence could pass unnoticed at a period marked by intense literary and philosophical activity. Readers who177 wish for fuller information on the subject will find in Zeller’s pages a careful and lucid digest of the whole controversy leading to a moderately conservative conclusion. Others will doubtless be content to accept Prof. Jowett’s verdict, that ‘on the whole not a sixteenth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy.’116 To which we may add that the Platonic dialogues, whether the work of one or more hands, and however widely differing among themselves, together represent a single phase of thought, and are appropriately studied as a connected series. Before entering on our task, one more difficulty remains to be noticed. Plato, although the greatest master of prose composition that ever lived, and for his time a remarkably voluminous author, cherished a strong dislike for books, and even affected to regret that the art of writing had ever been invented. A man, he said, might amuse himself by putting down his ideas on paper, and might even find written178 memoranda useful for private reference, but the only instruction worth speaking of was conveyed by oral communication, which made it possible for objections unforeseen by the teacher to be freely urged and answered.117 Such had been the method of Socrates, and such was doubtless the practice of Plato himself whenever it was possible for him to set forth his philosophy by word of mouth. It has been supposed, for this reason, that the great writer did not take his own books in earnest, and wished them to be regarded as no more than the elegant recreations of a leisure hour, while his deeper and more serious thoughts were reserved for lectures and conversations, of which, beyond a few allusions in Aristotle, every record has perished. That such, however, was not the case, may be easily shown. In the first place it is evident, from the extreme pains taken by Plato to throw his philosophical expositions into conversational form, that he did not despair of providing a literary substitute for spoken dialogue. Secondly, it is a strong confirmation of this theory that Aristotle, a personal friend and pupil of Plato during many years, should so frequently refer to the Dialogues as authoritative evidences of his master’s opinions on the most important topics. And, lastly, if it can be shown that the documents in question do actually embody a comprehensive and connected view of life and of the world, we shall feel satisfied that the oral teaching of Plato, had it been preserved, would not modify in any material degree the impression conveyed by his written compositions. breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five The bargaining was interminable, something in this manner:— Then follows a long discussion in Hindi with the bystanders, who always escort a foreigner in a mob, ending in the question— There was a bright I. D. blanket spread on the ground a little way back from the fire, and she threw herself down upon it. All that was picturesque in his memories of history flashed back to Cairness, as he took his place beside Landor on the log and looked at her. Boadicea might have sat so in the depths of the Icenean forests, in the light of the torches of the Druids. So the Babylonian queen might have rested in the midst of her victorious armies, or she of Palmyra, after the lion hunt in the deserts of Syria. Her eyes, red lighted beneath the shadowing lashes, met his. Then she glanced away into the blackness of the pine forest, and calling her dog to lie down beside her, stroked its silky red head. The retreat was made, and the men found themselves again in the morning on the bleak, black heath of Drummossie, hungry and worn out, yet in expectation of a battle. There was yet time to do the only wise thing—retreat into the mountains, and depend upon a guerilla warfare, in which they would have the decided advantage. Lord George Murray now earnestly proposed this, but in vain. Sir Thomas Sheridan and other officers from France grew outrageous at that proposal, contending that they could easily beat the English, as they had done at Prestonpans and Falkirk—forgetting that the Highlanders then were full of vigour and spirit. Unfortunately, Charles listened to this foolish reasoning, and the fatal die was cast. "They said they were going for our breakfast," said Harry. "And I hope it's true, for I'm hungrier'n a rip-saw. But I could put off breakfast for awhile, if they'd only bring us our guns. I hope they'll be nice Springfield rifles that'll kill a man at a mile." "Dod durn it," blubbered Pete, "I ain't cryin' bekase Pm skeered. I'm cryin' bekase I'm afeared you'll lose me. I know durned well you'll lose me yit, with all this foolin' around." He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods. "Yes, De Boteler," continued the lady, "I will write to him, and try to soothe his humour. You think it a humiliation—I would humble myself to the meanest serf that tills your land, could I learn the fate of my child. The abbot may have power to draw from this monk what he would conceal from us; I will at least make the experiment." The lady then, though much against De Boteler's wish, penned an epistle to the abbot, in which concession and apologies were made, and a strong invitation conveyed, that he would honour Sudley castle by his presence. The parchment was then folded, and dispatched to the abbot. "A very pretty method, truly! 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