Double Exposure Tutorial & Free Action

Happy Friday, everyone! I thought I’d give you all a treat today and write up a quick tutorial on how to recreate a double exposure in Photoshop. First of all, I’m sure there are lots of ways to do this, and even more ways to make it look more authentic, but since it really requires mass tinkering for each image, I thought I’d share the basics of what I do with you.

The simplest way to do it would be to copy one photo onto the other as a new layer, and then to change the layer’s blending mode to “Screen” and further adjust the opacity, but we’re going to add an additional tip. If you want to learn how to do it yourself, read on. But I’ve also made a few handy little actions in case you want to speed up the process. Download them for free here. =)

I find that just doing the old copy/paste/screen routine doesn’t quite get the balance I like. One image is always darker than the other and doesn’t really look like a genuine double exposure. So what I like to do is add a Multiply layer from the first image. It probably sounds confusing, so don’t worry, we’ll break it down.

The How To, Gumshoe

• First you’ll want to open both your images in Photoshop. Copy the first image (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C) and paste it onto the second image (Ctrl+V). If you want to go the extra mile you can also copy the second image onto the first and go through all the steps twice to see which image you like better. (They will be different!)
• Next put the top layer blending mode to “Screen”. If you have your layers window open, this should be located in the right hand sidebar. If not, go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options and when the window pops up you should see a drop down box that reads “Blending Mode Normal”. Click that box and select “Screen” from the list.
• Now copy your original layer (re-select your “background” layer, right click, select “Duplicate Layer”) and change the blending mode to “Multiply”. You should notice right away the balance between your two images is adjusted. Sometimes this is enough, sometimes I add another Multiply layer.

See, easy peasy! Enjoy!