Mark S. Johnson Photography

The ability to capture multiple exposures broadens the universe of creative possibilities. Most Nikon cameras possess a multiple-exposure feature. With this feature, it’s possible in-camera to create soft-glow montages, multi-image montages, multiple-exposure Monets, multiple-exposure tilts, and multiple-exposure rotate and zoom montages. Unfortunately, Canon cameras don’t possess a multiple-exposure feature, but don’t despair, I have good news. Uwe Steinmueller, editor of the Outback Photo website, authored a marvelous free Photoshop script that makes it extremely easy for Canon users to combine exposures in Photoshop. Although it’s not possible to preview these images on the camera’s LCD in the field, this script is the next best thing.

To begin the process, Canon users must capture a series of individual exposures with the intention of blending them into one using Uwe’s script. For example, if your goal is to create a multiple-exposure Monet appearance, capture between 2 and 10 individual frames where you move the camera in minuscule amounts between each frame. Here’s an example of the individual frames.

Then, when you return to your computer, go to http://handbook.outbackphoto.com/section_photo_tuning_filters/index.html and scroll to the bottom of the page. Locate the Free Scripts header and download the “DOP_LayerOpacityBlending” script.

Close Photoshop.

The downloaded script appears as a folder. Open the folder and copy the “DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending.jsx” and “DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending_Integrated.jsx” files into the Photoshop/Presets/Scripts folder. The Mac path is Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Scripts. On a PC, the path is C::/Program Files/Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Scripts.

Open Photoshop.

Choose File>Scripts>DOP_LayerStackOpacityBlending_Integrated.

In the Load Layers dialog, click the Browse button. Locate the individually exposed frames and Shift-click to select the entire range. Press Open. Click OK to launch the script.

When it is done, you will see an image that looks just as though you created an in-camera multiple exposure.

In most cases, you can significantly improve the appearance by adding a Curves adjustment layer to increase contrast.

If you’re interested in learning more about multiple-exposure techniques, I teach these techniques in many of my workshops, including those that I co-teach with Charles Needle and Bobbie Turner, and my weeklong RMSP Boulder workshop. Visit my workshops page to find out more.