Double Exposure?

[amandafrankk]

I couldn't find any tutorials on how to create double exposure edits. I'm pretty new to photo editing like this. 

[R C-R]

I am not exactly sure what you mean by double exposure edits, but if you mean something like a double exposure in a film camera, you can put two (or more) images on different layers & use the opacity slider on the top one(s) to create that effect.

[Asha]

Adding to R C-R's post--you might also have to change the layer blending mode.

[barninga]

@amandafrankk,

i don't understand what you actually mean: something like orton effect, or combining two different exposures to increase the dynamic range?

basically, layers, masks, blend modes and adjustments are involved. we can better help if you specify your needs with some more detail.

[3jst1]

I think I know what amandafrank is getting at. I have not used Affinity, but am researching photoshop alternatives and I think Affinity is going to be the one. I've been looking at tutorial videos as part of my decision making. As an enthusiast with "prosumer" gear, I think Afffinity will do everything I need and more!

 

What I have been wondering and I think Amanda is too, is if you can take two photos of an identical scene and merge them, exclusively using the exposure from one area of one photo, and the other area of the second. Classic example bright sky and darker foreground. I did watch some of the layering tutorials, but it looks like the layering function lets you "average" the two images, rather than selecting components of each and merging them. The average darkens the sky a little and brightens the foreground a little. What I'd like to know is how to take a picture where the sky is almost a white out with well exposed foreground, and then use the sky from and exposure where the the foreground is almost blacked out/shadow.

 

Thanks!

[barninga]

you can achieve your goal using layers and masks.

 

open an image, then open or paste a second image as a new layer over the first one. then add a mask to the new layer, click on this mask and start painting black on the image: you'll see that the areas where you painted black disappear, and let you see the lower image. you can paint the mask white to make the lower image disappear again. this way you can choose exactly what parts of the upper image you want to be visible and hide the corresponding areas of the lower picture.

if you paint gray, you get a transparency effect: the darker the grey tone, the more transparent the mask.

if the area you want to hide is small, you can invert the mask by pressing cmd-i and then paint it white to reveal the upper image.

 

if your goal is to keep the brightest part of a darker exposure and the darkest parts of a brighter one, you can generate a suitable mask by making a grayscale copy of the brighter image: then apply the threshold effect to it, adjust it as needed, gaussian blur it and layer->rasterize to mask. then apply the mask to the brightest image (that must be the upper layer). the process may need refinements (the threshold value, the blur level) but should easily and rapidly approximate what you need.