Create a long exposure image from video using Photoshop

Create a long exposure image from video using image sequence and stacks in Photoshop

Sometimes it just isn’t possible to photograph a scene as you would like it.

I was here with a client looking at some locations and made a short timelapse video of Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge.

I didn’t have the opportunity to carry a camera, tripod and filters; however, I can still create a long exposure look by using the timelapse, or a regular video clip in Photoshop.

You can complete the whole process in Photoshop but here I am using Premiere Pro to start.

So here is the process.

❶ In Premiere Pro add a clip to the Timeline and select it

• Use CTRL+M or ⌘+M or File>Export>Media...

• In the panel that opens, choose JPEG from the Format dropdown, you can of course choose TIFF or PNG

• You can choose how much of the sequence you want to export in the blue bar or Source Range dropdown, here I chose Custom which in this case is equal to Sequence In/Out or Entire Sequence
• You can change the output settings by adjusting quality and dimensions, uncheck the box to choose a smaller output size
• Further settings are available but I chose to keep the original dimensions and quality at 100%

• Choose Export or Queue to add to Adobe Media Encoder where you can choose output destination

❷ Into Photoshop

• Go to File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack...

• Select Folder and check Create Smart Object after Loading Layers

• Browse to find your folder, here I split my jpgs into three folders as there were too many, at 900, for the task here
• There's no need for me to choose to Align Source Images as everything was steady but it is an option if there was movement in your camera during recording
• Click OK

❸ Smart Object / Stack Mode

• Go to Layer>Smart Objects>Stack Mode>Mean or Median

• You can choose any stack mode here but Mean and Median will give the best results for a long exposure image
• Depending on how many images you have, this might take some time

• Try some of the other modes, here is Maximum for instance

• Save your final image

Note for Step ❷ if you know what Stack Mode you want you can choose a different path by going to:

File>Scripts>Statistics...

• Median is selected by default, try this or Mean
• Browse for your files or folder
• Uncheck Align Source Images if your video was steady

• OK
• Now Photoshop will create the stack based on your settings above, to change the mode just follow step ❸.

It's easy enough to create a still image from a video file but this method allows you to create something new from video.

Some editing to create the final image including crop, curves and saturation adjustments.