Gymnastics Vault Photo Montage Help

MileHighAko

I have a series of 6 shots of a gymnast doing a vault that I'd like to merge together to have one photo showing the gymnast at different phases of the vault maneuver. I've imported each photo onto a layer in Photoshop and did my best to manually align them (there MUST be a better way), and I'm using Opacity to try and blend them, but the result is weak - the gymnast is semi-transparent the entire time due to my 50% opacity.

Any hints on how to achieve my desired result? I hope I've been clear. I probably need to do something with a mask, but this is quickly getting beyond my current PS skills.

MileHighAko

Well I think I might have figured out the masking part, but the alignment part is still a problem for me.

Sam

If you hand held the shots, and or moved the camera at all I think aligning the gymnast will be almost impossible. What you could do is extract the gymnast from all but one image and then align the extracted gymnast with the other shots. Lots of work.

If possible next time shoot a burst from a camera on a tripod. Then putting them together will be a breeze.

Sam

MileHighAko

I realize now that I probably posted this in the wrong forum. Live and learn.

Yeah Sam, I know what you mean about a tripod, would probably be easier. Here is my result. Not a great job because I got lazy with the masking brush and so there is a bit of a glow around the legs on some. But I'm learning.