It’s easy to achieve an impressive double exposure effect on your phone. Double exposure photography is also known as multiple exposure if more than two photos are used.

This effect mimics a technique in analogue photography, where the camera shutter opens to expose the film more than once. The resulting effect is a photo that superimposes the exposures to create one single image.

Taylor Swift’s music video for Style features this effect prominently. In the music video, her profile forms the silhouette for her love interest using a double exposure effect.

iPhone/iPad Apps

Union – Combine & Edit Photos

Download for iPhone from the App Store. At US$1.99, the app is excellent value for money and is well worth the purchase.

The app is rated very highly and for good reason: this is an excellent app. The photo blending tools allow for any blending effect you want.

• Combine as many photos as you want by flattening your existing composition before you add another one.
• Colorize your photos with colors and gradients.
• Mask your photos with another photo or other shapes.

Fused: Overlay Photo Blender

Download for iPhone from the App Store. Free, unlock everything including blend modes and masking options for US$2.99.

Fused makes it easy to create a double exposure effect. Simply choose the background and foreground photos and try out different blend modes to achieve your desired effect. You can even use the mask painting tools to touch up the final effect.

• Comes with a massive searchable photo library
• Excellent editing tools including pinch to zoom, settings and paint/erase masking
• Images from the photo library download at a very low quality
• Free version is watermarked
• The app is quite ad-heavy and most features require a share or purchase to unlock. The ads can be intrusive at times.

Double Exposure Blend Editor (Photo Blender)

Download for iPhone from the App Store. Free, Premium Version available as an in-app purchase for US$4.99

Double Exposure Blend Editor is a good free photo blending tool. It comes with a range of blend modes and photo filters. However, it doesn’t include a paintbrush/eraser for removing unwanted parts of the top photos.

• Comes with a range of blend modes and filters for free
• Slick design that makes the app easy and intuitive to use
• Video tutorials available for free
• Doesn’t include any paint/erase masking tools, so it’s not possible to touch up or erase parts of photos after you blend them
• Most of the features require the premium version (e.g. using a photo as a text background) even though they are promised in the screenshots

Photofox

Download for iPhone from the App Store. Free, Premium Features available in a subscription for $9.99/month

Enlight Photofox is a feature-rich photo editing app. The ability to create double exposures is just one of the features that the app offers. Powerful eraser tools look like they have some kind of edge detection, which helps you make neat photos with minimal effort.

• Popular and very polished and allows for a lot of creativity with its many features: filters, text effects, blend modes, shapes, stickers and more
• Powerful tools, excellent for beginners and experts alike.
• Many of the features require an unlimited subscription which can get very expensive ($9.99/month!), especially if you forget to cancel.

Android Apps

• BlendMe : Double Exposure Free, ad-enabled: a nice double-exposure editor that allows you to blend up to four photos together. Includes mask erasing tools, text effects and other useful photo editing tools.
• Carbon Photo Lab – Double Exposure Blending Effect Free, ad-enabled: an artistic double exposure app. The app uses threshold effects rather than blend modes to achieve unique-looking photo-blending compositions.
• Photoblend Free, ad-enabled, in-app purchases Photoblend is a highly-rated photo blending app to help you to create a double exposure effect on two photos.

Features to look out for in a photo blending app

You’ll need to choose from a range of blend modes depending on your chosen photos. The best apps have:

• A selection of blend modes, each with their own options to adjust the blend settings
• Mask painter and eraser to touch up each photo layer

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