Last Updated on September 6, 2024
Multiplicity is a photography technique where several photos are taken of the same person doing different things in the chosen scene. All those photos are then digitally edited for instance, in Photoshop to show clones of the person doing different actions.
When the photo shoot is carefully planned, it is relatively easy to do the editing during post production. Personally, I feel that a tripod is great ally to bring Multiplicity alive. During the planning stage, it is worth thinking of conveying a message in the photograph so that the viewer will remember it in the head for a long time.
Requirements:
- Photoshop
- Layer Masking Skill
Background
In order to get the photos for this tutorial, I went to Gladstone Park with one of my friends who agreed to model for the photo shoot. Before setting off to the park, I showed him the following picture by Miss Aniela and explained what I wanted to achieve from the photo shoot in order to mentally prepare my friend for what he needs to do.
After getting to the location, I observed the environment, took some test shots. Worked out the composition and then fitted my camera onto the tripod and framed the shot. I used one of the dry leaves as a marker and then carried out my shooting. Ok, enough talking, let’s get into action.
Step One
Let’s open up the following photos in Photoshop. I know how you can open up the pictures. Just in case, click on File > Open or press Ctrl + O for windows users and Cmd + O for Mac users.
Fig: Photo-1 Fig: Photo-2
Step Two
Let’s copy the Photo-2 into Photo-1 file. To do so, please go to Photo-2. Press Ctrl/ Cmd + A to select everything. And then press Ctrl/Cmd + C to copy the picture.
Now, please go back to Photo-1 and press Ctrl/Cmd + V to paste the picture. Now you’ll see that Photoshop has pasted the Photo-2 on a new layer as seen on the layer palate below.
Step Three
As my tripod was moved between those two photos, we’ll have to do a bit of photo alignment work. Let’s reduce the opacity of the layer for Photo 2 to 50% to get started on aligning the two photos.
Let’s focus on aligning the hands as displayed below as that is the major point of interaction between two photos. The better we can align, the more believable it will be to the viewers.
Step Four
Once you are happy with the alignment, we got to work on layer masking. To start with, please make sure you have selected the top layer and click on the button highlighted in red below. You’ll see the layer mask as seen below.
After doing some masking work, my layer mask looks like below as highlighted in the figure. (If you want to learn how to do layer masking, there are plenty of tutorials on the internet.)
Step Five
Let’s do Brightness/ Contrast adjustment. Please go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast…
You’ll see the Brightness/ Contrast adjustment layer as per the below image. I’ve set the Brightness: 80 and Contrast: 30.
Conclusion
Here’s what the final output will look like.
Thanks very much for going through the tutorial. If you guys want a video tutorial, please do not hesitate to send me a request at hello@FineArtRef.com. You can download the finished file as reference here. For more inspirational tutorials don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS-feed and follow Inspirationfeed on Twitter + Facebook! If you enjoyed the following article we humbly ask you to comment, and help us spread the word!
