The Photoshop Productivity Series: Automating Photoshop

Stack Modes

Stack modes are available in the Extended versions of Photoshop and in Photoshop CC. Although these functions are designed with scientific purposes in mind, there are some interesting possibilities for photographers. Perhaps one of the best uses is to automatically remove objects from a series of photos.

In this scenario, let’s say I want to shoot a building but it’s on a busy street corner, so it’s impossible to get an image that doesn’t include people or cars. So I set my camera on a tripod and take a photo every few seconds. I still end up with unwanted elements in each photo but in different positions, while the building is constant (Figure 2.18).

Figure 2.18 Various photos of the same scene.

I need to load these images as ...