In the old days before automatic cameras it was fairly easy to make multiple exposures. Sometimes it was so easy that it killed what might have otherwise been a good photograph. Today it is practically if not totally impossible to intentionally take a photograph over another — unless you have a program such as one of the Photoshop editing programs. What I will display here and explain the how-to is just how to do that. I have used Photoshop Elements for this purpose.
We start with a subject. In my experiment I used some decorative grass just before I cut to it spring season height. But not just one but ten separate photos all just at a little different vertical angle. Said another way, with the camera on a tripod, I raised the tilt just a fraction between each shot. The 10 separate photos were then layered together in Elements.
![]() Open the first photograph, Duplicate and close this original. Double click on the layer name “Background” and change the name to “Layer 1”. The remaining 9 photographs are pasted on to the first photo in the series. Add the other nine photos in the order taken for a completed layer stack of 10 layers. Close each of the photos as you copy and paste so as not to get confused. Change the Opacity as follows:
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![]() Flatten the Layers and make a Levels adjustment if necessary. At the conclusion, sharpen with the Unsharp Mask. Do you see the relationship between layer number and opacity? |
![]() Maple Tree Bark |
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![]() Bamboo |
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