Focus Stacking

Focus Stacking - this is where you take 2 or more photographs,

focusing at different distances into your scene combining them

together in Photoshop to obtain maximum sharpness in your

image from front to back.

Why Focus Stack - we can calculate the maximum sharpness in

a scene by calculating the hyper focal distance, or as a rule of 

thumb by focusing one third of the way into a scene as as  the 

zone of focus is greater behind the focal then on front but if your

foreground interest is literally ten inches away from your lens

then this may not be enough to get a completely sharp image

from front to back. In order to get a completely sharp image

we need to stack a number of photographs taken at various

focal distances in photoshop.

Where and when - Landscape photographs where we require

photographs to be sharp from front to back. Macro photography

where we would use very shallow depth of field i.e. f/1.2 we

may have to combine photographs to increase our zone of focus.

Below are listed the steps taken in photoshop to focus stack two

photographs. These steps are for use in photoshop elements 12.

. Start photoshop editing program

. Open your two start images taken with the foreground sharp in

  one and the background sharp in the second image.

. Go to Enhance > Photomerge > Panoramic

. Click add Open files > Reposition > untick 'Blend Images' > o/k

. Select 'No' in clean edges box

. Sharp background ( top layer) , Sharp foreground ( bottom layer)

. Click on the top layer > choose Layer > Layer mask > Reveal all

. A white layer mask appears

. Choose brush tool

. Press 'X' until foreground colour is black

. Click on the mask > spray on the soft focus foreground to hide

  parts of the top image

. If you have revealed too much of the blurred back ground press

  'X' to change the fore ground colour to white

. Spray white over any unwanted bits of the back ground to hide

  them

. Tap left square bracket key to get a smaller tip for fine tuning  

  small details

. Choose the crop tool and set to 'No restriction' > click and drag

  to crop away any transparent or blurred edges

. ( Layers > merge visible)

. Choose file > save

. Set format to Jpeg

There are many examples of focusing stacking techniques for

the many different image editing programs and youtube has any

amount of photographers uploading videos to show their editing

skills so if this instruction above does not suit you needs then 

log onto to youtube and check out the videos that pertain to your

software.