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Multiple-Exposure Action Composite (The Not-Quite-as-Easy Way)

The previous tutorial showed you the easy way to blend multiple copies of the snowboarder together. I mentioned at the end that if the subject doesn’t overlap in any of the photos, the Auto-Blend Layers feature works really well. But, I cheated there. I actually only used half of the photos that were taken in the series (every other one). It looks cool enough, but I think it looks like an even better composite when there are more versions of the snowboarder in the photo. In fact, I actually think it looks really cool when they do overlap. Unfortunately, the automatic method doesn’t work that way, so we’ll need to do it manually.

STEP ONE:

Before we get started, let’s just take a look at what would have happened if we used Auto-Blend Layers for this composite using all of the photos—not just every other one, like I did in the last tutorial. As you can see here, some copies of the snowboarder are ghosted. Because of the extreme masking that Photoshop does with Auto-Blend Layers, it’s not worth even trying to go back and fix them. It’s just easier to do it the manual way, like we’ll do here.

STEP TWO:

All right, we’ll start this one out the same way we did in the last tutorial. Go to File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack to open the Load Layers dialog. Click on the Browse button and find the series of the same photos we used earlier. They’re actually the same exact series of photos, just more of them this time.

STEP THREE:

When you get to the Open dialog, click on the topmost photo and then Shift-click on the bottom one to select them all. 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.

STEP FOUR:

You’ll end up with a new image with a bunch of layers in the Layers panel. Think of the bottom layer as a sort of home base here. That’s going to be our main photo and everything else will end up blending in with that one. Right now, we won’t even see it, though, since there are so many layers on top of it. So, click on the top layer to target it, then Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. This adds a layer mask in hide mode (black), so the entire layer is hidden right now.

STEP FIVE:

Now, we just need to repeat this for every layer except the bottom layer. But, instead of Option-clicking to add a black layer mask to each layer, try this: press-and-hold the Option key, then click on the layer mask on the top layer, and drag it down to the layer below it. By holding down the Option key first, you’re telling Photoshop you want to copy the mask (not move it). So, it’ll copy the same exact black mask to the layer you drag it to.

STEP SIX:

Just repeat Step Five for all of the other layers, except the bottom layer. Leave that one without a layer mask. Since we’ve just hidden all the layers except the bottom one, you should now only see the snowboarder at the very end of his jump.

STEP SEVEN:

Get the Zoom tool (Z) and zoom in on the left of the photo where the flags are at the beginning of the jump. We’ll start there and reveal each layer and each frame of the snowboarder as he goes through the air. Here’s the problem, though: you can’t see where the snowboarder is in that photo because we hid that layer with a black layer mask, right? I suppose you could paint with white haphazardly until you see him, but there’s a better way. Shift-click on the top layer’s layer mask to temporarily disable it. You’ll see a big red X appear on the mask to let you know it’s disabled and that’ll let you see where the snowboarder is.

STEP EIGHT:

Shift-click on the layer mask again to turn it back on and then make sure it’s active. Then, select the Brush tool (B) from the Toolbox and choose a small, soft-edged brush. Press D to set your Foreground color to white (because the mask is black) and start brushing