Superimposing photos is a great way to add some extra interest to your images. Whether you’re adding text to a photo, or creating an image that looks like it’s floating in space, superimposing can be a really fun way to create something new.
But while there are many ways to superimpose an image, not all of them are created equal. Some apps are better suited for particular tasks than others, and some are better at helping you accomplish everything from basic enhancements to complex photo manipulations.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the best apps for superimposing photos so that you can find the perfect fit for your needs!
Best Apps For Superimposing Photos
Adding an overlay to photos used to be a complicated and time-consuming process. It was a luxury afforded only to professional photographers and required an expensive camera or editing software.
Luckily, these days you can add cool special effects to photos in a matter of seconds without spending a dime using only your phone. However, most people don’t realize this is a possibility and still leave effects like image overlay to the professionals.
This article will explain image overlay and show you 5 excellent photo editing apps that require no prior knowledge of photography or photo editing.
Top 3 Free Image Overlay Apps Snapshot
What is an Image Overlay?
5 Best Free Image Overlay Apps
PhotoDirector – Best Overall
Photo Blender – Best for Blending
Superimpose X – Best for Masking
Blend Me Photo Editor – Best Backgrounds
Pixlr – Best for Stylized Overlay
Best Image Overlay Apps Comparison Chart
How to Overlay Images
Best Image Overlay App for Free
Image Overlay App FAQ
Top 3 Free Image Overlay Apps Snapshot
PhotoDirector Logo
- PhotoDirector – Best Overall
PhotoDirector includes a wide selection of overlay tools. You can add animated elements like stickers and light rays or more traditional static overlays like lens flares and light leaks. Add background art to any photo in a single tap or create your own overlay with the Cutout tool and blending modes.
More Info >
Learn More
Free Download
For Android and iOS devices
Need the desktop version for Windows and macOS? Get your Free Download here.
Photo Blender Logo
- Photo Blender – Best for Blending
Photo Blender is part photo blending, scrapbooking, and collage-maker app. It has filters and lets you add stickers, frames, and text for a scrapbook-like feel. Change images to the correct aspect ratio for your favorite social media site without cropping precious chunks off of your images. More Info >
Superimpose X Logo
- Superimpose X – Best for Masking
Superimpose X is packed with tools to make superimposing easier than ever. Use up to 24 multiple layers, 16 adjustment layers, and 18 blending modes to create stunning image overlay projects on a user-friendly interface. More Info >
What is an Image Overlay?
Image overlay is a photo editing technique where an image or texture is added as a layer on top of the original image.
PhotoDirector App – Overlay Weather
Imagine you have a flat, boring photo of someone standing on a sidewalk. With image overlay, you can add snow, fog, rain, sun flare, etc., to make the photo more exciting and give it more depth.
PhotoDirector App – Overlay People
Photo by Charles Parker from Pexels
You could also add other images on top of your picture, maybe of a crowd of people in the background, to make the sidewalk look busy. You can then blend the photos together to make them look natural and apply blur effects to give the illusion of movement to the added people.
PhotoDirector App – Overlay Glitch
A third way to add image overlay is to add texture to your photo. This used to be done by exposing or scratching the film before developing. Now you can add scratches, glitches, VHS effects, etc., as a layer on your photo without harming the original.
5 Best Free Image Overlay Apps
- PhotoDirector – Best Overall
PhotoDirector App Interface
Compatibility: iOS, Android
Overall Rating: 5/5
Image Overlay Tools: 5/5
Key Features:
Easy object cutout and background removal
Animated overlays and stickers
AI tools, including sky replacement
Library of background art and effects
If you want professional-looking overlay effects in a quick and easy package, PhotoDirector is for you. It has a massive selection of image overlay tools, whether you want to blend several images, add texture like scratches and light rays, or overlay objects like snow and flowers onto your photo canvas.
In addition, there are over a million royalty-free images available to blend with your own photos in the stock library. Each overlay tool comes with a slider, so you can tweak the strength of the overlay and make precision edits. PhotoDirector even comes with animated overlays to make your photos come to life.
You can also stylize, edit, or animate your images with this one-stop-shop photo app. PhotoDirector has everything you need to make stunning works of art, ready to post or share. Make lighting and color adjustments with precision, use AI-powered tools to remove objects and backgrounds, and beautification tools to remove under-eye puffiness and slim facial features. Or add personality to your pics with thousands of stickers, filters, frames, and effects.
PhotoDirector is packed with unique editing tools and effects, plus it is incredibly straightforward to use. A user-friendly interface combined with creative tutorials and zero learning curve make this an excellent choice for new photography hobbyists and professionals.
Dazzle your followers with photo masterpieces that look like they were time-consuming to make with expensive, complicated software – but were done for free in mere seconds.
Download the PhotoDirector mobile app and start creating.
Learn More
Free Download
For Android and iOS devices
Need the desktop version for Windows and macOS? Get your Free Download here.
- Photo Blender – Best for Blending
Photo Blender
Compatibility: Android
Overall Rating: 4/5
Image Overlay Tools: 4/5
Key Features:
Blends 2 photos with a tap of a button
Advanced photo effects
Updated weekly
Photo Blender is part photo blending, scrapbooking, and collage-making app in one. You can use it to create stunning double exposure effects. Blend 2 photos easily with one tap of a button. The blending tool offers plenty of layout options.
Photo Blender also includes special effects like filters, blur, splash, mirror, and shadow effects. You can add stickers, frames, and text for a scrapbook-like feel. Change images to the correct aspect ratio for your favorite social media site without cropping precious chunks off of your images. Or create a collage from over 300 templates.
Photo Blender comes with some cool filters, but there are no options to add texture or overlays like snow, leaves, rain, etc. And while you can make a collage of up to 9 photos, it will only blend 2 photos at a time.
- Superimpose X – Best for Masking
Google Photos
Image from iPhone Photography School
Compatibility: iOS
Overall Rating: 4/5
Image Overlay Tools: 3/5
Key Features:
Multiple masking tools
Advanced photo editing
Lots of brush tools
Superimpose X is a tool for masking, layering, and editing photos. The app is best used for its image overlay tools. Remove objects and people with numerous masking tools, including Magic Wand, Magic Lasso, and predefined shapes. Or use AI to automatically mask out people.
There’s even a masking library so you can save your masked images. Superimpose X has 24 multiple layers, 16 adjustment layers, and 18 blending modes.
It comes with various brush tools like smudge brush, clone stamp brush, paint, and effect brushes, and a brush for darkening and desaturating. In addition, there are 63 photo effects, like vignette, frame, gradient, blur, and camera fill.
Superimpose X is a step up from the original Superimpose, but there is a learning curve, even for original users.
- Blend Me Photo Editor – Best Backgrounds
BlendMe App
Image from Photo Blender / Mixer – Blend Me Photo Editor
Compatibility: iOS, Android
Overall Rating: 4/5
Image Overlay Tools: 3/5
Key Features:
Backgrounds in portrait and landscape
Shape blend tool
Constantly updated backgrounds
Blend Me Photo Editor is an app that mixes two images together, either with a blend effect or shape overlay. It has AI photo cutout to easily remove a person from a photo and replace the background with one of the thousands of unique choices available in the app.
The backgrounds come in both portrait and landscape. The blend effect allows you to adjust opacity and fade to your preference. There’s also a shape blend tool to make unique and interesting blend effects. The app offers editing tools like crop, rotate, flip, text, and filters.
Blend Me Photo Editor is excellent for pairing one or more photos with a new background. The range of backgrounds is truly impressive, but it doesn’t offer any other quality overlay tools.
- Pixlr – Best for Stylized Overlay
Pixlr Interface
Image from pixlr.com
Compatibility: iOS, Android
Overall Rating: 3/5
Image Overlay Tools: 3/5
Key Features:
Tons of stylized filters and overlays
Beautification tools
Blur and splash effects
Pixlr has 2 million combinations of free effects, overlays, and filters to help you create something truly unique. Create cool effects, remove blemishes and red-eye with various beautification tools, focus on a single color with Color Splash, or focus on a person with Focal Blur.
With Pixlr’s Double Exposure tool, you can blend various effects using layers and adjustable transparency. In addition, there are many stylized and textured overlays to help adjust the tone of your images.
Pixlr is simple to use and has some good options for filter-like overlays. You can blend two photos together, but there are no cutout or background removal tools. To remove backgrounds requires a separate app, Remove BG by Pixlr. There are also no stock images or backgrounds to incorporate into your designs.
Best Image Overlay Apps Comparison Chart
Software
PhotoDirector
Photo Blender
Superimpose X
Blend Me Photo Editor
Pixlr
OS iOS, Android Android iOS Android iOS, Android
Easy to Learn Yes Yes Rotate 90 degrees or to a precise degree Rotates photos 90 degrees Yes
Cut Out Tool Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Blending Modes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Other Key Features Text, stickers, animated tools, splash, blur, glitch, beautification tools, crop, rotate, flip, filters Collage-maker, blur and splash tools, stickers, and text Photo effects, brushes, adjustment tools, text effects Add text, filters and stickers, also crop, rotate, and flip Collages, color adjust, blur, splash, text, borders
Free Download
Free Download
Secure Download
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How to Overlay Images
If you would like to create an image overlay effect, download PhotoDirector for free and follow these easy steps:
Tap Edit and choose an image from your Photo Library or Stock Images.
Scroll through the bottom menu and tap on Overlays.
PhotoDirector App – Select Overlay
Choose the type of overlay you want to use from Blender, Light Leak, Grunge, Scratch, and Lens Flare.
PhotoDirector App – Select an Overlay
Tap on overlays in your chosen category until you find the one you like.
With the Blender tool, you can also choose another photo from your library or stock images.
PhotoDirector App – Adjust Overlay
Use the Adjustment Slider to change the intensity of the overlay.
Tap the Check Mark in the upper right corner to save your edit.
PhotoDirector offers many other types of image overlay. You can find more under Elements, Effects, Cut Out, and Add Image.
When you’re done adding an overlay, you can continue editing your photo, save it to your camera roll, share or upload it to social media.
For more information on creating photo overlay effects with PhotoDirector, go to 3 Creative Projects You Can Do With Photo Overlays [iOS & Android]
Best Image Overlay App for Free
There are many kinds of image overlay effects, and it’s hard to find a single photo editor that carries them all. Especially a free editor that doesn’t require hours to figure out.
PhotoDirector App – Cute Overlay
PhotoDirector offers every kind of overlay – from background and object removal to photo blending and textured overlays. Even animated overlay effects. And the overlay effects offer many options in each category and are adjustable.
PhotoDirector offers so much more than just image overlay. It is an all-in-one photo editor with millions of backgrounds and stock images to use in your photo creations.
PhotoDirector is available on both iOS and Android devices. Download it for free today.
how to superimpose images on android
As a photographer, you’re probably always looking for interesting experimentation techniques to try out. Well, superimposing and overlaying photos using your smartphone is one that might be worth exploring for some very cool visual effects.
This is something that you can do on any iPhone, or right on your desktop if you’re already using one of the major photo editing platforms like Adobe Photoshop or Capture One.
In other words, it’s easy to do, fun, and the resulting creations might just be worth showing off to the world.
Below we’re going to cover a few key apps for superimposing pictures through your phone and several desktop methods that can be achieved through Photoshop.
Table of Contents
How to Superimpose Photos on iPhone
Unfortunately, the iPhone’s native camera app doesn’t allow photo overlaying, but a number of third party apps do let you change a photo background or superimpose new images quickly and easily.
We’ll give you an overview of three great options below.
LATEST VIDEOS
- Superimpose X
Using Superimpose X allows you to overlay pictures creatively.
The Superimpose X app is one of the best iOS installs you can download if you want to superimpose photos through your iPhone.
To use this handy tool, all you need is a working iPhone with some images saved onto it. Then, just get the app and you’re good to go.
Unfortunately, Superimpose X isn’t free to download, but its $4.99 one-time purchase price tag is pretty reasonable for all the dozens of niche tools it offers.
Superimpose X is surprisingly versatile once you open it up. There are dozens of functions to choose from and it does a bit more than just overly photos on top of each other.
Fortunately, the app offers up a detailed how-to tutorial right after being opened for the first time. The main point is that overlaying is something it does well and quite easily.
Once you have Superimpose X downloaded and running, you’ll need to select your pictures for foreground and background. Remember, the key thing to keep in mind here is that the images should be able to merge effectively and without crowding over each other in a way that ruins the visual appeal.
In Superimpose X you can select your images by tapping “Photos” on the upper left side of the app interface on your phone screen. From there you can pick out your background image first.
Once you’ve selected the background photo, you can now add the foreground by tapping “Transform” and then tapping “Blend”.
Next, tap “Add Layer” and then “Photo Layer”. Then select your foreground photo from your archives and the app will superimpose it over top of your background.
Interface of Superimpose X, one of the best tools for editing overlay pictures.
For images that are slightly smaller than the background image, you can also tap “Fit to Base” to resize them so both are of equal size.
As a final step, you should use the Superimpose X app’s opacity slider to adjust the translucence of your foreground image (or whichever) in order to make the merge smoother.
Voila, you’ve just merged two photos to create a new digitally edited composition.
Superimpose X offers many more variations of photo merging manipulation and can also be used to join multiple images into patterns or complex compositions. One section of the app that allows you to play with these aspects is called Blending Modes.
In Blending Modes you can merge multiple images to create complex patterns and dual-image superimpositions that take merging to another level.
To access this feature, tap “Transform” at the bottom of the main app interface. You’ll find the blend mode next to the Opacity option.
You can change the blend mode from its default of “Normal” to other options like Overlay, Darken, Multiply, and Lighten.
Each of these offers slightly different superimposing options. For example, Overlay keeps the darkest parts of a foreground image while merging the lighter parts with the background image.
Multiply merges the luminosity and contrast of different images into layers for merging. As for the Darken and Lighten modes, they blend the bright and dark parts of superimposed images to merge them together.
There are also a bunch of other features in Blending Mode. All of these can be experimented with in real time with any photos you select to create or undo effects for any photos you’re trying to merge.
Superimpose X also comes with a great image masking feature. This lets you cut out parts of a foreground image so that part of the background shows through.
You may use the application to fit one size image into another.
The app comes with a “Magic Brush Tool” option that lets you do this very selectively for even more dynamic merging effects.
There are also “Lasso” and “Magic Wand” tools (similar to Photoshop)for automatically cutting the edges of an object in an image when masking.
With these tools, you can cut out a “mask” from any one image and copy it for pasting to any other image as a merge.
Finally, because overlaying images also might mean having to make the final product look more realistic, we should mention the color correction tools of Superimpose X.
After merging images together, you can tap the “Filter” icon at the bottom of the app interface and with this you can adjust exposure to blend the different contrast levels of superimposed photos.
This same tool also lets you apply specific color filters to even out differences in colors between merged images.
There’s also a “Light Wrap” feature in the “Layers” area of Superimpose X that lets you automatically make the background and foreground image colors match.
- Enlight Photofox
Use Enlight Photofox to get creative image overlay effects.
Photofox is another mobile phone option for superimposing and merging images. It’s not as robust or versatile as the Superimpose X app, but it gets the basic job done quickly and easily for social media sharing or saving for later use.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed Photofox on your iPhone, just open it up and scroll through its QuickArt sections until you see the “Double Exposure” option.
Just as you’d do in Superimpose X, open up your phone’s archive of existing images and pick one that you’d like to use as a background. This can be any photo you like, but as we mentioned above, it’s a good idea to pick an image whose composition will complement that of the image you’ll be sandwiching on top of it.
Using filters may increase the creativity of your image. You can also adjust image size.
Enlight Photofox has filters you can use to get creative with your image overlay effects.
Now you can select a stock scene from within the app to apply over your own photo. You can do this through Photofox’s “Overlay” tool, which lets you adjust and move the image until it fits over your custom background photo.
Once you’re happy with the result, you can share the image to social media or save it to your phone – you can even use Airdrop to wirelessly transfer it to your computer for further editing (see: iPhone photography tips).
We should note that while Enlight Photofox is free to download, using its wider range of editing features to save images into your phone means having to pay a subscription price for the app.
- Snapseed
Use snapseed to get one image layered over another image.
Snapseed is one of the most popular iPhone apps for creating image art.
Snapseed is another very popular iPhone-friendly app for photo editing on the go. It offers a bunch of different tools and among them is also an option for superimposing pictures.
What Snapseed offers for doing this is fairly simple and straightforward, but it works wonderfully for overlaying without too much fuss.
Snapseed is also free to download, which is especially useful if you want to do a bit of creative editing without spending extra money.
To get started, download the Snapseed app from the Apple app store and get it running. Once the app is open, you can tap anywhere on its interface to open a photo selection menu and load one of your saved image files.
Once you’ve picked your first photo, simply tap the “Tools” icon and scroll down to the “Double Exposure” option. This is what will let you superimpose two photos together.
In the “Double Exposure” section of the Snapseed app, you can tap the photo icon at the bottom of the screen to select another image that you’ll merge with the first one you opened.
Snapseed adjusts the size and blend mode of your image.
Snapseed gives you various blending options that change the transparency of your image.
Once it’s loaded, you can move the overlay photo around until it fits with your underlying image in a way you’re happy with.
Another editing option here is changing the size of the overlay image so that it can be adjusted just right. You can change the size of the image by pinching or spreading apart your fingers.
Having fixed the size and fit of your overlay photo so that it merges properly with the underlying image, you can now edit the superimposed photos through the layers (shaped like a spread deck of cards) icon in the app. This mainly lets you subtract image elements and adjust contrast or brightness in the two sandwiched photos.
Another icon, shaped like a droplet, also lets you adjust the opacity of the overlay photo in Snapseed.
You can now save the image to your phone memory or camera roll.
How to Superimpose Photos in Photoshop
You can use Photoshop to do an image superimposition.
Photoshop offers multiple options for superimposing photos through the desktop app. There are three main methods that can be used either individually or together to create extremely versatile photo merge compositions.
The Photoshop platform’s most popular and arguably most flexible tool for doing this is called Layer Masks.
To use this, you simply need to open two different images in Photoshop, drag one so that it fits over the top of the other and in doing so cause them to layer together.
Once this is done, you can select which image you want to be your overlay picture in the layers panel on the lower right of the PS interface.
At the bottom of the same panel, there’s a small rectangle with a hollow circle inside it. This is what lets you create a layer mask between your two merged images.
The layer mask is transparent, but if you open up the Photoshop gradient or brush tools you can reveal or conceal from one image or the other as needed.
To do this, set the dual black/white boxes at the lower left of the Photoshop interface to show either white or black as the foreground box (pressing D or X on your keyboard does this quickly).
Using the gradient or brush tools with black in the foreground causes the underlying image to appear wherever you grade or brush to black. Setting white into the foreground on the other hand will cause elements of the foreground image to emerge.
You can use a layer mask to adjust your image in Photoshop.
Use a layer mask to get full control over which parts of your overlay image are displayed.
By doing this and using both the gradient tool and the brush tool in PS, you can merge two images almost any way you’d like in very precise segments.
Moving beyond the Layer Masks tool, there are two other much more broadly applicable merging tools that are also both found in the layers panel.
The first of these is called Blend Modes and it’s right above your photo layer thumbnails in this panel. By selecting one of your layer images and experimenting with applying different Blend Modes to it, you can create excellent photo merging effects.
Conclusion
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