Focus stacking – Part B (Getting the shots in focus)

Ok moving on to the shooting part of focus stacking. The shot you see about actually consist of four different shots aligned and merged into one single shot, thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Now let’s look at the four photos, notice how each of them is focusing at a different spot:

Hopefully by now, you get the drift. Basically i’m taking the focused part of each photo and merging into one sharp and focus shot.

Now with the four photos, here’s what you need to do with CS4:

1. Create one file with all four layers stacked on each of in a linear arrangement. This means that you SHOULD NOT jumble up the sequence of focused image.
2. Select all four layers, go to Edit>Auto align layers.
3. Once the layers are aligned, go to Edit>Auto blend layers.
4. Let ‘s the software run some processing and you will get an image with the sides slightly out of focused. This is caused by auto-alignment and you lose a bit of the image.

See! It’s that simple.

However, i stress the fact that you need a lot of patience as well as a sturdy tripod to obtain the best results. When you did your own focus stacking shot, don’t forget to show me!

By the way, here’s another article about focus stacking.

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