Working with Digital Photographs in Zoner Photo Studio
Be on the Move
Ever take shots of a superb ski jump and wish you could freeze-frame that like the pros? Well, don’t envy them anymore—be them!
With Zoner Photo Studio 13, it’s easier than you think. Just use the Join Multi-exposures feature. Start with a series of source pictures taken from the same spot, then let Zoner Photo Studio join them for you. Capture and see every nuance of a motion—step by step!
Taking the Source Photos
When you head out to take the source pictures to use with Join Multi-exposures, don’t forget to take a tripod. A stable shooting position makes your digital work much easier. So does exposure locking, as well as the use of serial photography to capture all the phases of the motion on “film.” Serial photography is taking multiple, sequential pictures with one press of the trigger. Most cameras today can do this; you just have to set the camera up for it. Look for the section in the camera manual marked “Serial Photography” or “Burst (mode).”
Selecting Pictures
Don’t use every shot in the burst for your multi-exposure. Instead, choose ones that do not overlap and that map every phase of the motion you captured. You can test for overlap by, for example, copying one photo onto another. During this test, create an editing layer (a selection) with an opacity of about 50%, so that objects on both shots are visible at once. Or instead test using Create | Join Multi-exposures | Align Pictures…. Select all the pictures in the burst (or none of them, if they’re the only thing on the folder). Click pictures in the left column to compare the positioning of the moving object in the series relative to its position in the first picture of the series.
Creating Your Picture of Frozen Motion
Checkmark all the selected pictures and use Create | Join Multi-exposures | Remove Moving Objects…. Despite the name, we won’t be using this function to remove any moving objects… instead, we’ll be using it to include multiple copies of a moving object. If you didn’t take the shots from a tripod, the wizard will try to align them so they’re not tilted relative to each other. Without this, they can’t be joined together.
In case of problems (your pictures have differing dimensions, alignment fails, etc.), take another look at your choice of source pictures and make sure that you did not include a picture from another series by mistake. You can also align pictures by adding “nodes” by hand. The column running along the left side of the wizard shows the set of source pictures being used. The first one in the set is the baseline against which others are compared. To fine-tune alignment, click one of the remaining pictures and then the Edit Shared Points button. The pictures are displayed beside each other and colored squares are shown atop them, marking the shared points detected on the two photographs. Click and move them, if needed, on each picture in the set.
(If you don’t manage to take good source pictures for your first try at using multi-exposures for freeze frame work, don’t throw your camera away; keep trying and training, using slower-moving scenes for now.)
Once you have your pictures aligned, click Next to move on to the actual creation of the final picture. The program does the work automatically. However, you want to make it include all copies of the moving object instead of removing it completely: turn on Duplicate objects. If the pictures were taken with a steady hand or a tripod, and there is no overlap between the copies of the moving object, there should be no problems. Now click Next to make the program create the final picture at full size and save it, open it in the Editor, etc.
Doubled objects.
When taking pictures without a tripod, the aligning process can fail, leading to duplication of areas shared by all pictures or the creation of “ghosts”—semi-transparent remnants of certain things in the picture. To try to manually correct “ghosts,” click the button with a rectangle icon and the bubble tip “Manually correct regions in the picture.” The cursor changes to a crosshairs. Select the particular rectangular area in the picture to work with, and then click the version of that area, out of all the versions in your source pictures, that the program should use for the final picture.
Once you are satisfied with your edits, click Next to let the program create the full-size version, then click a button to save or edit that version. We hope you have fun with this cool technique and get many impressive pictures out of it!
