How to Create a ‘Double Exposure’ Using Photoshop

We love a good in-camera double exposure; done right, they can look as surreal as anything we can create in post. But if you don’t have the skills, expertise, or interest in doing it in-camera, this quick tutorial shows you exactly how to fake the ‘double exposure effect’ in Photoshop.

The video is a bit dated—originally released in May of 2015—but the information and techniques work just as well today as they did a year and a half ago.

In it, Spoon Graphics shows you how to take a clean portrait and combine it with a landscape to create something beautiful and etheral. Going beyond just “this is how you drop a landscape into a portrait,” the video also shows you how to manipulate the image and background to produce the most pleasing final image possible.

No, it’s not a real double exposure—and the purists always bristle at creating something digitally that can be done in-camera—but it’s a technique many a creative would enjoy having in their tool box.

Discussion