Focus stacking comparing photoshop, helicon and zerene by. Focus stacking can be used in any situation where individual images have a very shallow depth of field. Not only dont we have mini bridge anymore but we dont have focus stacking any more either. Focus stacking using photoshop cs6 to increase depth of. To load the required images to be stacked as layers. Chasy draw ies chasys draw is capable of providing superresolution image stacking, supports icon editing, can convert multiple files images, and many more. Photoshop and elements each have their own way of combining the multiple images into a single photograph. I created this tutorial after moving to a mac full time and realising there were very few focus. Focus stacking and blending in adobe bridge and photoshop. Use scriptsload images as stack, or manually drag them all in. Focus stacking using photoshop cs6 to increase depth of field. The best thing about them is that you dont need to touch the camera to take the shots or adjust. The focus stacking is used in macro photography for subjects like. The ultimate focus stacking guide capturelandscapes.
Its simply not the endall beall solution to depth of field problems. Focus stacking also lets the point of transition between in and out of focus to be precisely selected. Since cs4, it offers these options at a level you can trust. Picolay is a focus stacking software with multiple uses.
Stack focus in photoshop for high depth of field adorama. Focus stacking can be used for a number of different types of shots, two of the most viable being landscapes and macro. The images are from a nikon d800 either raw 50mb or tiff 110mb. In this guide we will show you how to create a focused stacked image using photoshop. A longer focal length lens and a very shallow depth of field result in a pinpoint focal plane and often leave crucial elements of the image slightly soft. After you import the images into your computer, open them as layers in photoshop by choosing file scripts load files into stack.
How to get sharp macro shots with focus stacking cnet. I do focus stacking all the time for my insect macro photography. Actually this is limited to a maximum 8 shot focus bracket. With two major losses from cs6 whats the point of the cloud based product. Focus stacking comparing photoshop, helicon focus and zerene. Using either bridgecamera raw, my preferred option, or lightroom. Our advice is to choose your earliest stacking point, take a picture, rotate the focus ring a little bit, take another picture and repeat this process. In looking for software to stack images i found that adobe photoshop cs6 to cc2017, helicon focus and zerene stacker appear to be popular programs for image stacking all of these are commercial products, but the nice thing is that they all offer. However, if one is happy to do the focus stacking in pp, the camera will do up to a 99 shot focus bracket. This happens quite a bit in landscape photography when using super wide angle lenses. How to use focus stacking to get impossibly sharp photos. In a recent article, i explained what focus stacking was, as well as when. We need to align the photos in photoshop, and photoshop can automatically do that for us.
Any major sidetoside, upanddown shifting will create a change in perspective which makes focusstacking much more difficult. The increments that you rack focus at can vary depending on your focal length, aperture, sensor size, and desired result. There are a few pieces of software that can handle focus stacking, but here i am going to stick with one of the most common options. Restart your mac at the beginning of a normal lrps work day, do all the stuff you normally do and at the end of the day open activity monitor and look at the memory tab and look at page outs or. The focus stacking is used in macro photography for subjects like flowers, insects, jewelry, in microscope image processing, in landscape photography. With the arrival of catalina and the death of cs6, i thought id try purchasing a focus stack application. I use photoshop almost exclusively for focus stacking.
Focus stacking performance comparision of photoshop and. How to focus stack images in photoshop quick summary. How to shoot the images for best results with focus stacking. Focus stacking is an effective way to achieve deep depth of field. Its perhaps most useful in closeup and macro photography, since the camera lenss highest fstop is often insufficient to render everything in focus. Photoshop image stacking technique topaz labs blog. Focus stacking, or focus blending, means taking a series of images, each with a different part of your scene or subject in focus, and blending them together into a single image where your entire scene or subject is in focus in other words, photoshop doesnt just blend the images together.
Last week i discussed merging multiple shots of the same subject taken at different focus distances to create images with extended depth of field using a technique known as focus stacking. Focus stacking also known as focal plane merging and zstacking or focus blending is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field dof than any of the individual source images. Capture images for focus stacking there is a technique when it comes to focus stacking. Focus stacking in photoshop and lightroom points in. Focus stacking is the technique of stacking or blending a number of images that have been focussed at different points throughout a scene to give a final image that contains the sharpest portions of the originals, seamlessly blended into one. This week ill look at several software programs to help you do it. In this tutorial, well learn how to do focus stacking in photoshop. Now that the hard part is done, there are a couple of tools to get the effect we are after. On occasion you can get away without it, sometimes you may even want a slightly more shallow depth of field. It only takes a small amount of extra work during shooting and a few minutes of editing in adobe photoshop cc. How to use photoshop cs6 to blend images taken at different focus points into a single image to increase depth of field. A tutorial showing you how to stack images together to increase depth of field. Helicon focus provides two methods of focus stacking, and also has controls that can adjust the performance of the stacking algorithms and both method a and. The fujifilm xt200 is a lowpriced mirrorless camera with a stunning 3.
There are different programs to focus stack images see some others at the end of article, but i use photoshop cs6. This is a short tutorial on how to use photoshop cs6 to perform focus stacking to increase the depth of field in a photo. The idea is to make several images of the same sceneeach one slightly off in terms of focusing distanceand then combine everything in photoshop to create one image with big depth of field. Best focus stacking software for mac nikon fx slr df. L f4 is joby gorillapod slr zoom adobe photoshop extended cs6 image editing software for mac.
In photoshop, go up to the file menu in the menu bar, choose scripts, then choose load files into stack. Much like stitched panoramas, the stacked images are brief snaps in time taken over a much longer time than even a single stopped down exposure. I find it slower than either alternative and also less reliable, so i tend to not recommend photoshop for stacking unless one already has the program and is cashconstrained. Focus stacking is just one more option, but it is one of my favorites, if the conditions are right. Focus stacking is commonly used in various forms of photography but is most known within the genres of landscape and macro photography. Focus stacking is an intermediate photography technique that combines the use of a camera and a postprocessing software such as adobe photoshop. So ive been doing more focusstacked macro in recent months, and i have. With all your images now selected in bridge or lightroom, you are ready to go to photoshop. Both the merge function for panoramas and focus stacking are present. At first i used combinez and ps5 as some stacks seem to be handled better by one or the other. Focus stacking is a technique that can be beneficial when a photographer wants to extend the apparent depthoffield of an image, and also wants to avoid the loss of image sharpness that can result from the effects of diffraction when using an increased fstop. Several images are made of the same scene with the focus set at different points in the subject. Like everything in photography, focus stacking is a tool that can help in some situations and may not work at all in others. Learn how focus stacking in photoshop can bring your entire scene or subject into.
Photoshop cs6 and presumably later versions of elements works nicely for subjects that have reasonable contrast and require simple stacking. Above is a focus stack of a diatom where i combined 10 images in photoshop 400x. Focus stacking can be used in a number of different types of images, but the trick is most common for macro photography because getting up close creates a shallower depth of field i. Getting a good depth of field in your photos is ideal for landscape photography but if you really want to add drama then you need to go for an extreme depth of field using a technique known as focus stacking. Focus stacking lets you extend the depth of field by combining multiple images, each each of the same scene, but with a different focus point. Stack focus in photoshop for high depth of field expert. We covered a lot in this tutorial, so heres a quick summary of the steps you need to focus stack images in photoshop. Focus stacking is a powerful technique for extending a photos apparent depth of field. When you take a pic about microphotography, you cannot get the entire object in focus, however, more we. Adobe photoshop starting with the cs4 release, adobe added focus stacking directly into photoshop. Creating a focus stacked, vertical panorama with a 400mm lens. This video shows you how to use focus stacking to create an image with a large depth of field.
On a mac which is what im using here, use finder to navigate to your images. It can even overcome the otherwise unavoidable sharpness loss from diffraction. In this demo we used photoshop cs6 but it can also be achieved in cs4 and 5. In addition to better image quality, another benefit to using moderate apertures is that the depth of field is simply narrow and with several images, the exact point of transition can be chosen. The resulting photos, however, can be striking and unique, to say the least. While our eyes focus immediately, applying multiple levels of focus among several photos requires digital assistance. The app has an advanced automatic stacking algorithm and also includes manual retouch mode allowing to have full control of the final result. Focusstacker is an automatic focusstacking application, perfect for making highresolution images for large prints. Focus stacking works poorly in ps cc and not at all in ps cc 2014. If youre using photoshop cs6 or earlier and you want to create a. It can be used for landscapes as well as close up subjects.
These images are a result of a concerted effort to understand focus stacking, and two methods, helicon focus hf and photoshop ps, of processing the focus slices into a single image. It can perform image processing, create slide shows, make animated gif images, and more. This takes practice, but i find if you hold the end of the lens securely and find something to brace yourself with. Focus stacking is taking multiple photos at the same exposure but at different focal lengths and is best applied for macro photography. A focus stack is a photograph that is made up of a combination of two or more images that were focused at different points and then after combining the stacks the final image has a much greater depth of field. Focus stacking is a technique that will give your macro shots much sharper focus. How to focus stack images in photoshop photoshop essentials. Since i updated to the latest ps i do all my stacks in ps. Stacking is done in software using the digital images. An explanation about how we can do a focus stacking in photoshop cs6 using photomerge.
It is available for both mac and pc and they offer an excellent help page. Focus stacking is a fairly common technique used in the world of macro photography, but the process of focus stacking isnt always a straightforward one. Automatic detection and seamless blending of sharp image regions. The hardest part of focus staking photography, taking the series of incrementally focused images, can be easily accomplished if you own a nikon, canon, or sony camera and a smartphone, ipad, android or laptop, using the free hardwired software, digicam, or the more sophisticated helicon software. Manual focus gives us complete control of our depth of field. Best focus stacking software helicon focus vs photoshop. The separate captures are assembled in photoshop by loading them all as layers of a single image.