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randalp33064588
Known Participant
May 4, 2022
Question

Undoing a double exposure.

  • May 4, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 4556 views

I accidentally set my camera to double exposure; 12 shots ended up as 6 double exposures. Is there any way in LR that I can reverse this - i.e., sort out the two separate exposures in a double exposure?

4 replies

randalp33064588
Known Participant
May 5, 2022

Thank you all for your responses. As usual, I realized only too late that I have not provided all the relevant info.

My camera saves RAW (actually, DNG) files  to the memory card. I first noticed these double exposures with I checked one shot in the playback mode - which of course is an internally-generated jpeg, but only temporary and not stored on the memory card.
When I imported the images into LR Classic and view them in the develop module, they show as the double exposure. But (as I understand it) the images are still in DNG form at that point (that's what the label says). But it is only ONE DNG file.

I was hoping there would be some way for LR Classic to separate out the two meant-to-be individual images. But it sounds improbable.

Community Expert
May 5, 2022

If these DNG images have the same expected file size that would be seen with a standard exposure, then there doesn't seem to be anywhere that a separable pair of images could be "hiding". Out of curiosity - what model of camera?

randalp33064588
Known Participant
May 5, 2022
Hmmm - another good point that I had not thought of. You are right - the
file size on the doubles is the same as the single exposures. So - I guess
the second exposure data for each pixel was combined with the original
data. I found one double where one exposure was landscape and the other
portrait - the combined double is portrait, but I do not remember which
exposure that was.
This camera was a Pentax K-1 mii - the top of their line. The selection for
multiple exposures is on one of the buttons on the 4-way controller, the
same button used to choose single shot, multiple shot, bracketing, etc.
That day I was driving with two friends and three dogs, and had no place to
put my camera except wrapped in an old shirt in a crate in the rear with a
bunch of junk. I'm thinking that after one stop I neglected to turn the
camera off, and it bounced against something hard enough to activate that
button.
My "lesser" Pentax K-50 requires entering the menu system to activate
multiple exposures.
Community Expert
May 4, 2022

In all cameras I have used, Multiple Exposure means the inextricable merging of two (or more) photographs - this feature being disabled when set to Raw, so reserved for JPG. There are recently invented features (common with cellphones) whereby sequential frames from a single shutter-press get captured as a sort of 'movie', that lets you later vary what output image is constructed from those frames (or select between them when the subject is moving). But Multiple exposure is not of that sort and emulates a much older film-based technique that involves completely different shutter-presses being treated as one. So the output is a single, standard image file that does not retain the different shots as different shots.

 

If there is (say) a featureless white or black area in one of the shots, then something of the other shot could in principle be recovered just within that one area of the frame - but Photoshop would be much the better environment for exploring that, than Lightroom would be. In almost every case though, this sort of accident is (sad to say) not reversible.

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 4, 2022

If the photo is in a flattened file format such as JPEG, then the double exposures probably can’t be separated. For example a pixel might be 40% black, but common photo software would have no idea how many percent originally belonged to image A and image B.

 

I haven’t used a digital camera that saves double exposures, but if you are very lucky, the camera saved them in a layered format where the two images still exist as separate layers in the file. If so, it might be possible to pull them apart, but that is not a feature of Lightroom Classic. If the camera comes with its own image processing software, see if it allows editing, remixing, or separation of that camera’s double exposures.

JP Hess
Inspiring
May 4, 2022

I will admit that I am totally ignorant about double exposures. I have never attempted to do that. However, as I understand it, a double exposure would be a single file comprised of two exposures. So what it seems to me you are asking is for Lightroom to somehow split a single image into two separate image files. There isn't any provision for such magic in Lightroom Classic or Lightroom.