One of my bosses has left for a new position. Lots of other folks are taking this three-day week for vacation. So I decided to stage a coup. Click the “read more” link to find out how I took this shot.
Microsoft has discontinued its support for its GroupShot program. You can’t download it, and what’s worse, you can’t even use it if you had previously downloaded and installed it because it has “expired.” Frustrating.
So, I had to resort to a “merge and mask” approach in Photoshop to make this work. During my lunchtime I set up the camera on a tripod in our board room and took twelve pictures, moving to a different location for each image. I used my remote shutter release with a 10 second delay so that I could quickly move to the next position. It took only a few minutes to capture all twelve shots.
The first batch actually failed. To save time, I had the camera set to autofocus, with automatic shutter settings. Each image therefore had a slight change of focus, which really threw things off more than I anticipated. I re-shot the set using manual focus and a fixed shutter/exposure setting for each image. Except for my position, each image should have been identical.
I imported each image into Photoshop, pasting each into a new layer to form a composite image. I created a layer mask for each added layer to blend the images. Each time I added a layer, I would merge it with the one below until all twelve versions of me were visible.
The right side of the picture was easy to do. There were no overlapping areas. I had to use a bit more care with the layer mask for the left side, especially with the two versions of myself that were arguing with each other. Close inspection may reveals some flaws in my masking, from quick glance I think it looks OK.
[tags]Photoshop, multiplicity, photography, clones [/tags]