AFTERGLOW | Night 6 | Thu Oct 8

Double Exposure

Your first night in real Photoshop. You're putting a whole world inside a person.

Layer masksRemove BackgroundClipping masksBlend modesAdjustment layersPSD vs JPG

What a complete project looks like

Picture a movie poster. You see one side-profile portrait of you, on a clean light background. Inside the outline of your head and shoulders there's a whole other photo: a foggy forest, a city at night, ocean waves. The scene lives only inside you. Outside your outline, it's empty.

Your face still reads: you can make out the eye, nose, and lips through the scene. It's not just a blob.
The edges are clean. No leftover chunks of the wall or the old background.
The colors feel like one image, not two photos stacked on top of each other.
You hand in two files: the layered .psd (the recipe) and a .jpg (the meal).

Open your PSD and the Layers panel should read, from top to bottom: a color adjustment, Scene (clipped, with a mask), Portrait (with a mask), Background.

Grab the starter file

This is a Photoshop file with the layers already named and stacked. Open it, and you're in the right spot.

Download the starter PSD Free photos on Unsplash

Cold open: what's a mask?

Watch the first 3 minutes together. That's the whole idea: black hides, white reveals.

Want the deep dive? The full 29-minute lesson from PiXimperfect is there for early finishers.

The build

Done with this step

Self-check before you turn it in

This one is in or out. Every box gets a check, or it's not done yet.

The portrait is a side profile, and the background is gone (removed with a mask, not erased).
The scene shows only inside the person (clipping mask).
The scene uses a blend mode other than Normal, and the face still reads.
The scene layer has its own layer mask, painted to bring the face back.
There's at least one adjustment layer (Gradient Map, Black & White, or Color Lookup).
No leftover template layers: the "delete me" layers are gone, and GUIDE is hidden or deleted.
Saved as LastName_DoubleExposure.psd with every layer intact.
Exported as LastName_DoubleExposure.jpg.

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