How to - Clone yourself

Get twice as much done in a day by cloning yourself! 

Cliff notes.  Set camera on tripod, take 3-5 images and blend them together in photoshop.

Difficulty: Medium

Things you will need:

Camera
Tripod
Image editing software (elements or photoshop suggested)
Imagination

I am writing this up assuming you have a fairly decent knowledge of how to use your camera and photoshop (or other editing software)  If you have questions in the end, or this makes no sense what so ever, shoot me an email and I'll see if I cant confuse you even more....kidding....slightly.


1. Set up your camera on a tripod and compose your image. Taking some time with the set up and framing will really save you a lot of work in post production.  The idea is that the camera remains the same for each shot so we can blend them together later.

2. Figure out your exposure.  You will need to make sure it is the same in every frame.  An easy way to get your manual settings would be to shoot the scene in P or auto and then look at the aperture (fstop) and shutter speed that the camera came up with.  Switch to manual exposure mode and dial in those values.

3. Now get your focus locked and switch to manual focus.  You dont want the camera trying to refocus once you start shooting.

4.  If you are doing this by yourself, you will need to set the self timer. 5-10 seconds should do the trick. 

5.  Take a series of  photos doing different things.  Make sure you are careful not to overlap the images.

6.  Bring the set into photoshop and decide which image will be the base layer.  Then copy each of the other images onto the base.  If you 'select all' (cntrl a) and then 'paste' (cntrl v) each image onto the base, it will create a new layer.

7.  Now there are a couple ways to blend the images together.  You can erase the layers underneath (if you are using elements) to bring out the image below, or you can create a layer mask and paint back in the layer below.  You can create a layer mask by selcting the layer you want to work on and then clicking on the icon I have highlighted below.

Black takes away and white adds.  I prefer the layer mask method as I always seem to make mistakes.  So now just paint your self into the image.

Do this for each layer.  When you are done, compress all the layers by hitting cntrl, shift and E.


8. Have fun!

Have fun and post up your results in the comments!