Digital Focus: Double-Exposure Special Effects

Feature: Make a Double Exposure

In the world of 35mm photography, double exposures are great fun, but really hard to do well. You have to set the exposure manually because the total amount of light reaching the film has to be the same that you'd get from one fully exposed picture--even though you're making several exposures on the same frame. Simulating a multiple exposure digitally is a lot easier.

The Magic of Multiples

Why try multiple exposures? Because they're cool! You can take a picture that includes the same person doing two or three things at once. You can create a montage that combines different--but related--subjects in the same picture. You can go for far-out stuff, or make a simple artistic statement like my sample photo.

In this picture, I've simulated a soft-focus effect by combining a sharply focused image of a flower with another photo that's framed exactly the same, except I made sure the camera was completely out of focus.

The good news is that double-exposure shots in digital photography take seconds to do and don't require any of the elaborate planning or in-your-head exposure calculations that similar effects with 35mm film require. And you can combine any number of photos into your image.

Combining Your Photos

Load two photos you plan to combine in Paint Shop Pro. Make sure that they're both the same pixel size by choosing Image, Image Information from the menu. If one is larger, select Image, Resize to resize it so they're both the same. Select one photo and choose Edit, Copy to put it in the clipboard. You can close this image file to get it out of the way. Now select the other photo and choose Edit, Paste, As New Layer. You should see the first photo appear on top of the selected photo, completely obscuring it.

If the Layer Palette toolbar isn't already somewhere on the screen, open it now by choosing View, Toolbars and clicking the Layer Palette. In the Layer Palette toolbar, drag the transparency slider for Layer 1 from 100 percent to the left until you can start to see the underlying image. Reducing the setting to 50 percent will give you equal amounts of both pictures. If you want one of the images to be more prominent than the other, drag the slider back and forth until you get just the right multiple exposure effect. For my flower double exposure, I blended the two images so the in-focus image's transparency was around 25 percent.