Help with merging layers

[TG.]

i recently seen a photo of a person washing his car, anyway there were several shots of the same person in the same picture if you know what i mean, i've seen similar before but can't find the images, anyway i just wondered if anyone knew if there are any tutorials of how to do this, i know it's something to do with merging the layers in photoshop, so any help greatly appreciated, and if anyone has other examples please do post

 

[Phil T]

Basically you need multiple shots of the same scene with the subject moving around within it. This means tripods & as much weight on the camera to stop it moving. Once you've got all the images, open the first as your background. Then, open each other image as a new layer BUT process each layer one at a time. The trick is to use the eraser tool (or the brush in layer mask mode) on each previous layer to expose the subject. Once you have done this for each layer, flatten the layers & save.
There are a few examples here on the forum - I've got some but believe me you don't want to see a fattish bloke poncing about in only shorts....

 

[TG.]

thanks phil, i have taken the shots i wanted on sunday, i shot them in RAW and have to process, i'm guessing it will be best to batch process the 3 i took so that they are all the same, they were taken on all the same settings using a tripod, if you could point to where the other ones are on the forum that would be appreciated, or post your own,don't worry about the shorts

 

[Janice]

I did it by putting on a new layer then erasing off the bit where the person underneath it was and so on for each person/layer.

 

[TG.]

I did it by putting on a new layer then erasing off the bit where the person underneath it was and so on for each person/layer.

thanks janice, i will give that a try too.

 

[CT]

By far the easiest and quickest way - and it's pixel accurate.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1936

 

[TG.]

thanks CT, i also found a photoshop tutorial cd from the may issue of digital photo magazine, i knew i had it somewhere, so found it today and tried the method on there,it use's the layers method in photoshop CS, it was the first time i've tried anything with layers but it was good fun and quite enjoyable, and the result was'ent bad

 

[antihero]

I did it by putting on a new layer then erasing off the bit where the person underneath it was and so on for each person/layer.

i would do it that way too, would be quite a bit quicker (and cleaner) than using the clone tool imo.

great effect though!