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Photo Blend – Double Exposure
Key Takeaways
- Snapseed is a top free mobile editing app with a built-in double exposure feature for realistic results.
- iPhone users can fake double exposure effects using Live Photo and Zoom features, best for still subjects.
- Blend Editor, Double Exposure, Photo Blend, and Adobe Express are free apps for creating similar realistic double exposures.
A double exposure photo is an element of film photography that’s still popular. With modern technology and just your smartphone, you can easily create fun double exposures for free with a handful of mobile apps.
1 Snapseed
Snapseed is a great free mobile photo editing app. Not only does Snapseed come out on top compared with Lightroom Mobile, but its double exposure feature is natively built-in, meaning you can easily create awesome double exposure photos from your phone.
With built-in tools, Snapseed lets you create double exposures in a similar way to how film cameras expose them. Starting with a photo with large swatches of black or dark areas allows for an easier application of the second exposure, which traditionally appears in darker areas left behind from the first frame.
Our tutorial for creating double exposures in Snapseed goes into more detail on how to create and compose the best double exposure photo from a smartphone. Good tips are starting with a high-contrast image, then converting it to black and white before adding your second image.
Download: Snapseed for Android | iOS (Free)
2 iPhone Camera
While the iPhone doesn’t strictly offer a native double exposure effect in its cameras, there is a way to fake the effect. You can create a double exposure photo with your iPhone in a similar way as taking a long exposure photo with your iPhone camera, by using the Live Photo feature.
This effect will work best on a still subject with an obvious focal area, such as a portrait or still life on a blank background. Too much of a cluttered background around the subject will result in a messy photo.
Select the Live Photo option before taking your photo. At the same time—or immediately after—you select the shutter button, and zoom in by pressing 3x. Alternatively, you can quickly move your camera closer to the subject, but too much movement will negatively impact the result.
Once the photo is taken, go to the Library and open it. On the top left, select Live > Long Exposure. This accumulates the frames used within an iPhone live photo and gives the effect of a long, open shutter. With the differences between the zooms as you hit the shutter, your photo should look like a double exposure.
While the iPhone’s built-in camera can provide vintage double exposure effects, if you want to replicate other film photo effects, there are plenty of great apps that provide film and polaroid-style photos.
3 Blend Editor
Blend Editor is an iPhone and iPad app that lets you create quick double exposure photos, and the free version of the app is all that’s required to create double exposures using your original photos. The pro upgrades allow you to create more specialized double exposures with skyscrapers, galaxy-scapes, artistic elements, or even levitated subjects.
Select Classic and upload the two images you want to superimpose with one another. Once uploaded, select Next and choose your blend type. You can move the top layer image around for better fit, and you can hit the switch icon to change the order of layers too.
Blend Editor is a simple app that creates high-quality double exposure images. It doesn’t have fancy bells and whistles, but you don’t need them anyway. If you want to achieve more precise results, Adobe subscribers can make double exposure photos in Photoshop.
Download: Blend Editor for iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
4 Double Exposure
The Double Exposure app lets you both upload your own photos or use the in-built camera to compose images for your double exposure.
It has a handful of features to improve your double exposure result; however, some of these are exclusive to the Pro subscription of the app. For free, you can increase or decrease the exposure of both layers of images or add a small variety of filter types. Free users will have a watermark on their double exposure images.
The Pro features let you turn your phone into a DSLR camera with the settings choices—perhaps making this app a good reason to ditch your camera for your smartphone. You’ll find options like shutter speed, aperture, and focal distances to name a few. These features can be helpful even if you’re not producing a double exposure.
Download: Double Exposure for iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
5 Photo Blend – Double Exposure
With multiple Android apps bearing a similar name, this double exposure app offers the closest results to a traditional double exposure photo. Photo Blend is easy to use, you just need one great photo and the app provides the rest to complete your superimposed image.
After uploading your own image, you’ll then choose from the options provided by the app for your multiple exposure image. The options range from cityscapes to landmarks and sunset photos, with some more available exclusively under the Pro plan.
Your selected image will be overlaid with your original photo, allowing you to zoom in and out or move up and down to create the perfect double exposure composition. While the results are not as customized as the other apps pride, you can still create some fun double exposure photos with this app.
Download: Photo Blend for Android (Free, in-app purchases available)
6 Adobe Express
Adobe Express can be accessed in multiple ways, including through a web browser, desktop app, as well as mobile apps for both Apple and Android devices.
If you don’t subscribe to Adobe Express—most other Adobe subscriptions come with Express—you can still create a double exposure in the free version. To avoid needing the paid-for background removal tool, find or take an image that has a white or light-colored background and a dark-colored subject.
Desaturate your original image, then adjust the brightness, contrast, shadows, and highlights to get the background as white as possible and the bulk of the subject as black as possible—this is where the second exposure adheres to the most.
Select the Plus and upload your second image. You can resize, rotate, or zoom in or out. Then select Effects > Blend to apply your double exposure effect. Use any further tools available—Express offers a lot of cool features—to adjust or edit your image before saving.
Download: Adobe Express for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
These six apps offer great free ways to create double exposure effects on your smartphone. In my opinion, Snapseed is the best free option that provides the most realistic double exposure results. It allows you to customize a lot more than many of the other free apps, although all the apps on this list provide true-to-life double exposure photos.