Shadow illusion photography trick

This is one simple photography trick or more of a photoshop trick. For this trick to work well you need to get long shadows of your subject and so it is preferable to try this during the morning or evening hours when the sun is at an angle which casts long shadows.

Shadow illusion - Trick Photography

To make this shot happen it is better to have your camera on a stable tripod. Simply take one shot of your model standing with his / her shoes on and then another with just the shoes. It is necessary to make sure that your model keeps the shoes as stationary as possible so that both the pictures align properly when you later combine them in Photoshop.

Shadow illusion - Trick Photography

In Photoshop import the two pictures as layers into one; the picture with the model in it should be your top layer and the picture with just the shoes should be beneath it. If you are not using a tripod and get slightly misaligned pictures you could use Edit > Auto Align Layers function to make Photoshop align your layers for you. Once everything is properly aligned just mask out the person from the picture and you have your very own shadow illusion photograph.

Once i posted this article, i got quite a few mails asking for exact instruction on doing it in Photoshop So here's a step by step guide.

1. Open both images in Photoshop
2. Select the move tool ( Keyboard shortcut V )
3. Click and drag the picture with the person in it on top of the other.

Now you have both the images as layers in a single file

4. In the Layers panel, Shift + Click on both layers to select both layers.
5. Click Edit > Auto Align Layers

Now both layers are properly aligned

6. Select the top layer. Now click the Add Vector Masks button to add a layer mask to the top layer.

Add Layer Mask to the top layer

7. Press D and then X and then B and you will have the Paint brush tool selected with black as the paint colour.
8. Now paint over the model to mask her out and you are done.
9. Select both layers in the layers palette, right click > Merge Layers and you are ready to save the picture.

Here is different view, just one of few we experimented with.