How do you overlay a series of images to get one combination image?

[Machinax]

Hello all.

So I was oot and aboot yesterday and I took a series of pictures of a drummer in action. It was a rapid series, like five pictures covering five seconds of him rocking out. I want to combine all those five pictures into one ... "master" picture. My idea for the "master" picture is one single picture, where you can see his arm and body movements (and the drum cymbals moving) from all the five pictures.

That's probably a terrible way of describing it, but that's what I want to do...and I have no idea how to do it. I tried layering the pictures together as overlays, but while that combined all the images together, the end result was too blurry to make anything out.

Any tips? Ideas? Redirections to an appropriate thread would be appreciated much.

*I use "images" and "pictures" interchangeably.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

A good place to start: Clone Yourself.

You're on the right track with layering, but unless you used a tripod to secure the camera, each image is likely to be taken from a slightly different point of view. This will incur the blurring when you try to blend the images.

In the long run this may not matter, but you should try to line them up as best you can (press F4, reduce opacity then use the move tool and the arrow keys to line up the static/critical areas).

An important point is to remove as much of the overlay images as possible to reduce the possible blurring due to camera shift.

[Machinax]

A good place to start: Clone Yourself.

You're on the right track with layering, but unless you used a tripod to secure the camera, each image is likely to be taken from a slightly different point of view. This will incur the blurring when you try to blend the images.

In the long run this may not matter, but you should try to line them up as best you can (press F4, reduce opacity then use the move tool and the arrow keys to line up the static/critical areas).

An important point is to remove as much of the overlay images as possible to reduce the possible blurring due to camera shift.

Yeah, I think you touched on the problem I'm having - the camera shifted ever so slightly for those five seconds I did the series (no tripod), and overlaying the pictures one over the other simply brings out the differences. I think I'm going to give up on the overlay idea this time, but thanks for the tips.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

If you're facing giving up, why not first upload the five images here and see what other users might be able to do with them?

[MadJik]

If you're facing giving up, why not first upload the five images here and see what other users might be able to do with them?

Yes, isn't the reason for the Pictorium's image hospital?

BTW I would choose two points as reference to move/rotate/align the 5 images to overlay them as much precisely as possible...

References must be on passive object (background light tripod, corner of box...)