Photoshop Compositing Secrets - Matt Kloskowski [51]
STEP THREE:
Now, you need to turn your camera to Continuous or Burst mode. It’s going to differ for each camera, but you basically want the camera to take photos as fast as it can. Also, the FPS (frames per second) your camera will shoot will vary. Some entry level DSLRs shoot 4 fps and some of the pro models will shoot 9 or 10 fps. The main difference that FPS makes for this type of photo is the distance between each photo of the subject. The lower the FPS, the more space between each photo. The higher the FPS, the closer they’ll be. Sometimes, they’ll even overlap if the subject isn’t moving really fast. Here’s an example of what the spacing may look like using a camera with a lower FPS vs. one that has a higher FPS.
Lower FPS
Higher FPS
ADAM ROHRMANN
STEP FOUR:
Here’s a setup shot taken during one of the series of photos while Tom was out shooting. It’s of a skier, but the concept was the same for the snowboarder. You can see that Tom has his camera locked down on a tripod as the skier flies through the air.
Multiple-Exposure Action Composite (The Easy Way)
If you read the title to this tutorial, you probably noticed I wrote “the Easy Way” at the end. That’s because there are two ways to create a composite like this, and I figured I’d show you the easy, automatic way first. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, so I’ll show you the other way (not really that difficult) in the next tutorial.
STEP ONE:
In Photoshop, we’ll need to get all of the images from the series into one document. You could always do it the hard way by opening each photo and dragging them individually into one image, but Photoshop’s got a much easier way built in. Just go to File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack to open the Load Layers dialog.
STEP TWO:
Click on the Browse button and navigate to the series of photos that you’ve captured (or just follow along by downloading the ones I’m using here). When you get to the series in the Open dialog, click on the topmost photo and then Shift-click on the bottom one to select them all.
STEP THREE:
When you’ve got all of the photos selected, click the Open button, and then click the OK button in the Load Layers dialog to start stacking them. It took about 30 seconds for Photoshop to stack the ones I’m using here.
STEP FOUR:
When it’s done, you’ll have one image window with a bunch of layers in the Layers panel. In the Layers panel, click on the bottom layer, then press-and-hold the Shift key and click on the top layer to select them, along with all the layers in between.
STEP FIVE:
Remember how I said we’re going with the easy way first? Watch this. Go to Edit>Auto-Blend Layers and then, in the Auto-Blend Layers dialog, in the Blend Method section, click on the Stack Images radio button (if it’s not already selected). Then, make sure the Seamless Tones and Colors checkbox at the bottom is turned on, and click OK. This one can take a while depending on how many photos you used—it took almost two minutes on my computer, so be patient with it. It’s definitely worth the wait if it works.
STEP SIX:
When it’s done, if you’re following along with the photos I used here, you should have something that looks like this. You have to admit, that’s pretty sweet, huh? No masking, no brushing, no nuthin’! The Auto-Blend Layers feature seamlessly put all of the photos together. Just take a look at the Layers panel and you’ll see some crazy layer masking going on there. It’s done an almost flawless job in my example. Everything looks good, except for the second frame from the left, where we have a little ghosting, which can be cleaned up with a little painting on the layer mask.
Before we move on, I feel like I have to tell you that it doesn’t always work as well as it did here. One of the reasons Auto-Blend Layers worked so well here is because there was some distance between each copy of the snowboarder. If they overlapped in any way (which they will in the next tutorial), or they interact with the background too much, you’ll see