The Orton Effect

First introduced by Michael Orton in an article from Popular Photography, the Orton Effect allows you to create images that are impressionistic and ethereal.

Before digital photography, "slide sandwiches" were used to create this effect. I learned this technique from Canadian photographer Andre Gallant at a workshop in New Brunswick, Canada.

He would create two overexposed slides of the same subject, one with sharp focus and the other blurred, and then sandwich the two slides together, and print from the newly created slide. Andre has a beautiful book of his slide sandwiches, called Dreamscapes.

The purpose of this page is to introduce you to this effect and point to in-depth tutorials and articles that explain how it can be accomplished digitally using various editing programs.

I will show you some of my Orton images and explain how I apply this effect using Photoshop Elements. My tutorial is not meant to be in-depth, but to give you an overview as to how it is done and point you to other resources.