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Have you ever wondered how Mr Malique creates his clones? Well, I’m here to teach you how to clone yourself just like the way Mr Malique does it!
Yeap, for my maiden post on this blog, I’m gonna do an in-depth tutorial on how to create your own clones, using Adobe Photoshop.
Here’s a list of tools you will need to be able to do this tutorial along with me.
-
A digital camera.
You got a spankin’ brand new DSLR like Yanni’s Nikon D80? Great! You got a point-and-shoot consumer camera? No problem too! What? You want to use a film camera? Erm… Possible… But will be more than doubly troublesome. Let’s keep things simple and I shall assume you own/can borrow a digital camera.
-
A tripod.
A must. Okay, not exactly a must, but it will make things so much easier. Easy is the keyword in this tutorial, okay?
-
Adobe Photoshop.
Any version will do, as long as it supports layer masking. If the graphics program you’re using allows you to mess around with layer masking, you’d probably be able to adapt the steps here to fit that program.
I shall be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
- Of course, you will need a computer. I shall assume you have access to one since you’re reading this entry.
Mac or PC, whatever your choice may be, it will suffice. I will be using a PC.
But before we begin the tutorial proper, I am going to have to assume several things about you:
-
You have taken photographs before, and know the basics of your camera, for example, how to take a correct exposure and how to set the timer.
-
You have used Adobe Photoshop before, and you know what layers are.
-
You know how to use your computer, whatever the flavour may be.
Now that all that is over, let’s get started!
Step 1:
Attach your digital camera to your tripod and find a nice spot to create your clones picture. Easiest places to create such shots include a nice row of chairs (like the one Mr Malique and me did a while back), a row of phone booths, a wide open field, the toilet (mirrors are always fun to play with!) and even just your room. Let your imagination run wild.
You don’t need to have a shot of the empty area that you will be shooting at, but here’s an example of what would make a nice place to create your clones at.
Step 2:
Place your tripod-attached digital camera at a spot that would capture a nice scene. If you’re alone, please make sure that the spot is not at a high human-traffic area that would allow just anybody to snatch your precious camera away while you’re cam-whoring! Be careful, people!
Set the correct exposure and then set the timer on your digital camera. Try to set as many settings as possible to manual. If you’re not comfortable with manual settings, you can use auto too, but just remember that some auto settings may make the photograph’s colour cast vary from shot to shot (which can be corrected in Photoshop, but we’re not going to get into that in this tutorial). What we’re looking for here is a consistent look for all the shots you’re going to take.
Set the timer to about 10 seconds, along with the timer indicator. Most cameras should have a timer indicator which is just a light (LED) that blinks every second until the timer runs out. Some have beeps along with the light. Either, or both, will help.
Step 3:
Press down your shutter and run to the first spot you want your clone to be at. Or walk, if the distance is short. Or sprint, if you inspire to be like Uncle Sha.
Once you’re at your desired position, pose like you’ve never posed before.
Watch out from the corner of your eye for the timer indicator to stop blinking (or you could just estimate the countdown of the timer) and stroll back to your camera.
Step 4:
Okay, step 4 woohoo! Important note here. Please do not shift your camera from its original position. Leave the camera on your tripod, and leave the tripod where it is. Don’t move anything! Okay, good kitteh. The point of leaving your camera unmoved is to make sure that you will get all your photographs to match each other. This will make things so much easier later on.
You can review your first photo now, but try not to move the camera at all if possible. If you shift the camera a little bit while you were pressing the buttons, chances are things will be okay, but if you actually lift up the camera to see your pictures, your next shot won’t match the first one, and I’d recommend repeating Step 3.
Step 5:
Repeat Step 3 anyway.
But at a different spot. For example, if you were sitting on the first chair of a row of chairs in Step 3, then sit on the second chair for the next picture.
Step 6:
Repeat Step 5 until you have all the clones you want. But since this is a beginner’s guide, I shall stop at making 2 clones only to simplify things.
I will be using these 2 images below:
Image 1:
Image 2:
Step 7:
Bring your 2 photographs to Adobe Photoshop. I would usually use the photograph with the cleanest background as my bottom-most layer in Photoshop, ie. Layer 1. Cleanest background meaning the photograph with the least amount of distractions or human traffic in the background.
Create a new document with the same dimensions of your photograph (for example, 2560 x 1920), then open your first photograph in Photoshop. Right-click the layer and click Duplicate Layer, and choose to duplicate it to the new document you just created (should be Untitled-1 if you haven’t named or saved the file just yet) under the Destination.
Next, open your second photograph, and do the same thing.
At this point, try to align the pictures together as close as humanly possible. If you did Step 4 well, then aligning the pictures together will be easy. Or you might not need to do anything at all ’cause the images are perfectly aligned already.
Step 8:
Since we’re only working with two photographs for this tutorial, now choose the top layer with the second photograph and add a layer mask.
Step 9:
Without clicking anywhere else after Step 8, press the Alt and Backspace buttons to fill the layer mask with black. (Option + Backspace for Mac users.) If you did click somewhere else, make sure you click on the layer mask before you press Alt + Backspace.
This hides the top layer from showing. The following few steps will allow only certain parts of the top layer to show.
Step 10:
Right-click on the layer mask and click on Disable Layer Mask. This allows you to temporarily unhide the top layer.
Step 11:
Click on the Brush Tool (press B button for the shortcut) and choose a nice round brush.
Step 12:
Set your foreground colour as white. Refer to image below for a quick way to do that.
Step 13:
Let’s recap. So, you have your Brush tool selected, preferably with a nice round brush at a size like 35 pixels. And your foreground colour is now white.
Your layer mask for the top layer should also already be disabled.
Alright, go ahead and single left-click on the layer mask. Now it’s time to brush over your clone. Just use the brush tool and swipe around the photo of you that’s on the top layer. It will look like nothing is happening, but with every brush stroke, you’re allowing parts of the top layer to show through the mask. If both your pictures are aligned properly, you don’t even have to be careful at brushing over your clone. The image would still look good.
At this point, you can right-click on Layer 2’s mask and click on Enable Layer Mask to see your progress.
If you find that you were letting too much of Layer 2 show, you can change the foreground colour to black and “erase” off the white brushes that you did before. Of course, there’s always the History list or Ctrl + Z to undo your last action.
Keep in mind to brush in all the shadows and reflections (if any) of your clone. Otherwise, Tish and ET would be quick to point it out to everyone!
Step 14:
Once you’re done, right-click on the layer mask, and click on Enable Layer Mask and you should be able to get something like this.
Cool eh?
And once you’ve gotten the hang of that, you can try with more clones!
Update :
Check out my tutorial on how to do precise selections to find out how to create more advanced clones! Plus, how to use a similar method to lose your head!
Come shoot me with comments if you have any questions or if you think I missed something out. If you try cloning yourself using this tutorial, give us a shout out and post a link to your clones yah? 
This entry was published by mr malique’s co-author, Zul. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect mr malique’s opinions. Zul is a hobbyist-photographer, an engineer by education, but a web designer by profession. He can be found roaming the streets begging people to accept HTML into their hearts. Other times, he can be found not making much sense at zuldevil.com
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| Related Posts: Tutorial : 4 simple steps to colour-correct your photos! Tutorial : How To Do A Precise Selection! Tutorial : How To Lose Your Head! |
98 guys talked!
wooo, so that’s how it’s done.
can’t wait to try it… *grin*
thanks zul, for sharing…
ok one day i will try this tutorial clone! thanks for the pimp!
btw, the last picture is cool. nice pose!
yanni : Hehe, thanks!
This is so interesting… maybe I should try it out some day! Muahahahaha… I wonder how long I will take with my half-baked Photoshop skill.
Ed, with zul’s precise tutorial, i bet it’ll be quite easy.
xinyun, yanni: try one, and show us!
(we’ll be waiting~)
eh eh eh u also need a farnie guy for that!
ooooooohhhh so I’m the mistake spotter. thanks hor!!!
hehe.. great tutorial. there’s many ways to do it, but you taught the easiest one. perfect! I hope I don’t have to do tutorials if I get to become a guest writer. wahahha..
Haha it looks so damn cool, I’ll try it out after Higher Chinese O’s. THANKS!
Tish : I was just testing to see if you were paying attention.
I wouldn’t say this is the easiest way, but I’d say it the best easiest way. Hahaha. Easiest, would just be whack with Eraser tool, but that’s too destructive to the photo for my liking.
jieyang : Welcome!
thanks for the TIPS!!!
i never thought it was that EASY!! heheheheh.. SHOULD TRY IT OUT SOON!!!!!
ouh ouh!!
very nice tutorial, very clean and clear..
adobe cs3~~~~
ouh ouh!
i found a freeware, that’s almost as good as photoshop and less chaotic than gimp(i don’t like the 3 individual thing going on).
its MS Paint bigger and more powerful brudder…Paint.net!!
paint.net is gegegereeek!!!
i shall bring my clones out someday and try this! thanks for the tips. heheh
[...] Tutorial : How to create your own clones! [...]
Haha Zul, I’ve tried the tutorial out, and I dunno leh, I feel there’s no need to change the colour of the mask to black, just colour of brush turn to black can liao. Oh yah, I didn’t use a picture with no “characters” in it too. So yeah, is there any significance of a blank picture like in the row of chairs in step 1?
I’ll try it out with more clones this time. Heh, I’ve only tried out me and 1 clone.
Thanks
I saw your clones, nice job! I’m glad that you found the tutorial helpful.
You can use a black brush to mask what you don’t want shown too. I stated to change the colour of the vector mask to black ’cause I wanted to use the bottom layer as the background and then show the top layer. If you like to do a different way, that’s fine too.
Do what’s comfortable to you!
The row of chairs in Step 1 was just to show a potentially good place to try your posing pictures at. It’s not necessary to have a blank template (as I like to call it), but sometimes it’s useful if you find that your other photos’ background are always filled with people. If you don’t need it, you don’t have to use it, but it’s not a bad idea to have one “just in case”.
Not a bad job for a first try!
Zul…
oohhh… that will be NICE!!!
thx!!!
I Hit the control backspace button and it says fill, but does not turn black ,not sure if its a setting or something. (using cs3)
If hitting Control+Backspace is not working for you for some reason, here’s another way to make the vector mask black:
1) Single-left-click on the vector mask to select it.
2) Click on Edit > Fill
3) Under Contents > Use: dropdown menu, choose Black and click OK.
You should have your vector mask filled with the colour black, leaving the contents of the layer underneath shown through.
Hope that helps!
eraser?! hark!!! neverrrr!!
Ooh thanks! I have been wondering how they do that! Thanks for the tutorial and you explained every step so well that even a monkey would understand it! =D (Y)
I tried this on the same version of of photoshop that you are using - but it didn’t work =[ When I left clicked on the vector mask, it automatically enabled it - and when I rubbed over the picture, it just took it away and didnt clone it - what am I doing wrong =[
It sounds to me that you’re using a black-coloured brush instead of the white I mentioned? Remember Steps 9 and 12, to fill the vector mask with black first, and using a white-coloured brush to show certain parts of the layer.
If this is not the solution to your problem, please upload a screenshot somewhere and give us the link. We’ll be happy to take a look at it and help you figure out what went wrong.
how to put the two pics in the same adobe photoshop? :[[
You’re stuck at step 7, no? What you do is create a new document in Photoshop, then open image 1. Right-click the layer and click Duplicate Layer, and choose to duplicate it to the new document you just created (should be Untitled-1.psd if you haven’t saved the file just yet) under the Destination.
Then open image 2, and do that same thing.
Problem solved.
Well I didn’t try out that cloninh thing. I am still a total noob in photoshop. Still working on “prepering the pictures” for further changes (color fix, skin smoothing etc). But I will sure give it a try since it doesn’t seem very difficult.
Best regards
Tom aka Belzee
WOoooooW! xD.. that’s just soooo coool !.. much better WOW effect than Vista had on me haha, you rock Zul !
Awwwww, shuckssssss… Thanks!
Are you gonna try?
Thank you so much, this was very easy and i really wanted to know how to do this.
Thanks alot for this great tutorial….i tried it out and it worked perfectly!!
I LOVE IT!!!!
One thing, i want to do more than 2 people. How do i do that?Do i create vector masks for each layer instead of the top one only?
Show us your end product, yea?
If you want to create more than 2 clones, yes, all you do is create vector masks for each layer. You got it.
Ramez, show us!
[...] hoffe mal du bist der englischen Sprache m?chtig dann hab ich n?mlich auch zwei nette Tutorials: Nummer 1 …. Nummer 2 …. Aber musst halt schauen das du deine Kamera fixierst, wie HHHening schon sagte. Am [...]
hey nice tut. i tried this on my own this last summer with photoshop 7. but i actually went the “eraser” route. figured it was the simplest way to do it. the results were actually pretty awesome though. so how can i post one of my finished photos here? thnx.
Hi Michaelangelo,
You can upload it to any free file hosting sites like http://www.imageshack.us and post a comment again with the link of your file.
Looking forward to it.
hey senor malique. heres one of the cloning photos i did. i just used one of the shots as a base..and layered the rest over it one by one and went at it with the eraser. i need to make an action shot with clones so i think ill try out your method for that one. thnx again for the cool tutorials.
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c398/mr_lizerd/nataliexfour.jpg
Using the Eraser tool is definitely the easiest way to create the same effect, but I think it’s too destructive to the photos… But to each, his/her own, yea?
thnx for the comment Zul.
the only reason i used the eraser method was because i hadnt come across anyone doing it any other way. so i basically taught myself how to do it using the eraser. i will definately use malique’s method next time around to get better results. by the way..what exactly do you mean by it being “too desctructive” to the photos? just wondering. thnx again for the feedback.
Well, using Vector Masks allow you to keep the original photo untouched, while using Eraser will delete away parts of the photograph. If you work on the image for quite some time and realise that you shouldn’t have erased one part of the photo which you did earlier on, you might have a hard time getting that erased bit back. Using Vector Masks, you just need to colour the bits back in using white.
But, as long as the end product looks good, it doesn’t really matter. The tutorial was done using Vector Masks for a reason though… So that if you make a mistake, you won’t have much problems undoing that mistake.
Glad you enjoyed the tutorial!
that’s very easy la dude!!
ahh i get what you mean now zul. well im pretty new at this photoshop thing. any time i can learn something new..is a plus for me.
hey thank you. with photoshop, so far, all i know how to do are lightsabers. so thank you very much for putting this up and they seem easy enough to follow. gonna try it out right now.
just finished mine! thank you very much. it was just a test so i don’t even have my head in it lol. but still thank you
here’s the link: http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l44/germannssie/firstclone.jpg
very
This is an amazing tutorial
nice work
thank you
I call fake.
Zul has not made this photo using photoshop.
He does in fact have 3 clones of himself that staged this photograph.
Faker!
XD
Haha.
I have the perfect idea! I thought I might do one in my room of me playing cards with 3 or 4 other of me around in different cloths to make it look like all different players. And since I tend to cheat in any kind of game, guilty as charged, I thought it would be funny if all the players had extra cards hiding somewhere around them. For instance in Uno where your trying to get rid of all your cards. Haha. This is going to be great. Thanks for the tutorial.
You know, I can’t believe I was so close to figuring it all out on my own… but thanks God I stumbled upon your Tutorial, It rocked, thanks a bunch for posting it. I had the main Idea I just missed a couple steps… Peace!
And all the best and congratulations on your baby!
excellent tutorial btw, awesome… but how do you take care of body’s that overlap? for instance that last picture you have the you farthest right food behind the middle you?
That’s how you do it!
i did it….thx!!!!
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j266/mfe90/marcusclones1.jpg
Now go read my latest tutorial on how to do precise selections so that you can make more advanced clone pictures!
Flenoir, that’s cool dude!
i love reading your blog, I have the rss subcribed in my reader.
well, you could intentionally leave out reflections and such for a vampire effect, or a “mirrors show the truth” effect. like, take one picture of you, and another picture of someone else in the same spot in front of a mirror, take you out of the mirror, and put your friend in using this tutorial.
Yea, that’s one way to play around with this tutorial, but I didn’t go into it to somewhat simplify things.
Thanks for your comment!
I tried that before. My computer got a virus and is now in the shop. Thanks a lot moron
How does one get a virus by following a Photoshop tutorial? You must be doing something amazing to be able to do so. Congratulations!
harold, you’re funny.
[...] How to Create Your Own Clones, sebuah trik fotografi untuk menampilkan beberapa pose dengan latar belakang yang sama. [...]
omg loved it
[...] Clone yourself - today! Nah, just using the technology of [...]
I’m totally going o try it
I’m totally sure that I’ll get frustrated and give up. But at least I’ll try it
I have the utmost confidence that you will be able to do it! If you get stuck in any of the steps, just drop a comment here and I’ll sort you out, yah?
[...] Kembar saya….. 25 05 2008 saya tertarik sebenarnya pada gambar yang dihasilkan oleh abikal. lantas malam ini saya tergerak pula untuk mencuba sendiri selepas belajar mengenainya di sini. [...]
[...] of the layer and that’s all you need. Now click on the Add Layer Mask button. If you had tried my cloning tutorial, you might remember where that is? If you don’t recall, here it [...]
this is super cool. i’ve got to try this. thanks for this clones
I LOVE THIS, I TRIED IT and i think i did a pretty good job
I LOVE THIS, I TRIED IT and i think i did a pretty good job
it was such an easy but awesome turorial 
Thanks! Care to show us your final outcome?
thanks for the tutorial i did use ur tutorial and this is wat i cam with
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaau/2844881971/in/photostream/
Thank you very much, this was soooooooo helpful.
This is my first attempt…
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oLUt3yiytWk/SV2nQ4AU-vI/AAAAAAAAAS4/fPE9p7WECP8/s1600-h/CloneMe2+copy.jpg
Hey Zul! cant figure it out for CS2
What problem did you encounter? The steps should be the same for CS2.
Thanks for this!
Really bad lighting, but I was just mucking around http://www.flickr.com/photos/skgillespie/3355569583/
Cheers!
[...] of the Crazy Clones, or Clone to the fourth power. What the heck am I talking about? Please look HERE. Get your photos for this assignment this weekend. You must have your camera in 1 place, do not [...]
[...] Download your clone photos and start working on the CLONE PROJECT. When there is about 15 minutes left in class, we will switch to the [...]
Thanks for sharing . And Now i know he he thanks
[...] (Props to my friends on Flickr and this guy’s tutorial.) [...]
Hi mr. malique, I have a question can I also create this using macromedia fireworks?
wow your tutorial is very intersting.. I want to try it.. thanks zul and mr malique..
so amazing how to article.. can’t wait to try it.. just found this blog.. so exciting..
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