How do you do those 'clone' shots?

I hope I describe this well to everyone's understanding. Lately I've seen some shots where you see multiple 'copies' of the same person in the same exposure. For example, you could consider a shot of a living room, with 3 or 4 different copies of yourself in the room doing different things. One copy of yourself could be sitting on the couch, #2 could be lying on the ground, #3 might be talking on the phone and #4 might be eating a pizza. Seems like a cool little gimmicky trick. I'd like to try it out!

My question is how do you pull this off?

This is what I suspect:

Say we want the above situation (living room). We tripod the camera and shoot 4 different exposures, with the subject engaging in those different activities for each shot. Then in PS, choose one particular exposure (any), and then simply cut and paste out the subject from the other exposures into the master exposure. The lighting should of course look natural since the subject in each different shot was shot with the same exposure settings and was in the exact same scene. It seems pretty easy, but I'm wondering if there was a better way.

Edit: So am I on the right track?

My understanding is that you'd put each of the exposures on a different layer, then mask each layer out to reveal the others beneath it. Shouldn't be any cutting or pasting involved.

Ah yes, makes perfect sense. Thanks!

Put your camera on a tripod and don't change the lighting, aperture, speed, ISO or focal length between exposures. You can use the eraser tool at low opacity to blend the shots or you can use layer masks. Just keep the edges of your transitions soft.

Do a search here for multiplicty. There's a tutorial in one of the threads.

WARNING: contains items that might make you hungry

Yeh, where's Bobster at? I seen a thread a while back he started and got the idea as well.
I had to give it a try because of that thread. So while having a cookout, I made my brother pose for some shots. I used layers in PS to compile the shots. It was fun because no one knew what I was doing at the time! Well anyhow, it's not perfect, but here it is-
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https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=5831735&p​ostcount=4

Sevillafox, that's great! thanks

Great stuff, I'm gonna try it out when time allows. Thanks for the tips everyone!

One tip for a slightly more realistic result is to change your clothing between shots, unless you are specifically going for the identical twins/triplets/quadrup​lets etc look.

Another approach is to open all three pictures at once then use the clone tool to clone from one picture into another. This works best if you have some separation between your "clones." When your clones overlap as in this composite, you'll have to use masks or be very careful with the clone tool.
When cloning a character into another shot, find a reference point close to the character and use it both as your sample point and the point you begin to clone in the target picture. This way your background will match up.

If you are using PSCS3, you can use the "Align layers" command to register all of your images. That way if they are handheld, you can still get a pretty good composite. One application I heard of this was, for example, a couple on vacation. Without a tripod, you can still get a shot of the two of you, handheld, without soliciting some stranger to take your picture. You take a shot of your partner, framed the way you want it. Then you step into the scene and your partner takes the same shot of you, framed in the same way (same focal length, etc. and same reference points for framing). Then you can bring both images into PS, use "Align Layers" to register the images and then composite you into the image of your partner using layer masks or whatever tool you choose. You may have to lay in some shadows that one subject might cast on the other, but that is fairly easy. You have to give some thought to the individual poses and how you want them to combine visually, but I thought that was a pretty nifty trick.

Kirk