Multiple exposures are something that are relatively easy to do with many Nikon cameras, but are not available at all with Canon. I am a Canon shooter (too much money in Canon glass to change now) and I was intrigued by the multiple exposures that I had seen Freeman Patterson produce, like “Rudbeckia Swirl” and “Maple Spiral”.
While I am no where near that proficient at creating the spiraled multiple exposure images, I have made a number of attempts, and developed a series of actions to build multiple exposure images from 9, 10 and 16 images.
To create them you start with a series of images with a zoom and rotation (you can work with different camera movements to create other effects that are also pleasing) with the rotation working around a point of interest.
When you stack these images you create an image that looks more like this:
Definitely quite a departure from the original series, and it creates an impressionistic interpretation that I find very appealing when done well.
You will find 2 separate series of actions. The first stacks the individual images as layers and then uses a formula of 1/# of layers to set the opacity of each additional layer. I find that this Opacity method produces somewhat flat colors at times, so I will frequently use a Lab color adjustment layer that I adapted from Dan Margulis’ technique. This generally produces WAY too much color and requires a reduced opacity and frequently a layer mask to shield some of the color. I’ve include a Lab Color Boost action in this Action Set.
The alternative method uses a blend mode of Multiply and brings up a Curves layer that is a rough estimate at a one stop lightening of the image. Individual images generally require an overexposure of the square root of the number of images, so with a 9 and 10 image stack the action creates 3 of these Curve layers (one stop each) on top of each image, and in the case of a 16 image stack the action creates 4 of these layers.
Either series of actions can be used on fewer images, but it will attempt to close the background image when it runs out of images to process, so if you get a dialog with an option “Don’t Save,” press the “Cancel” button and the “Stop” button when it appears. If you are using the Multiply methods, you may need to delete some of the layers that lighten each layer.
As always, please provide some feedback or suggestions so that I can improve the actions.
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