A 3-step Guide to Focus Stacking
Why is this important? Many of us love a shallow depth of field and have a collection of lenses to accomplish that look, but for a landscape, to feel like you are immersed in the image, the details need to stand out. If you focus on the foreground, everything else is fuzzy, but if you focus on the background, the foreground is fuzzy – the solution? Focus Stacking! We are going to take 4 separate images with 4 separate focus points and let photoshop work its magic.
- Updated: 08 Oct 2024
In the Field
Here you are at a beautiful location, and you want everything to be in focus, just like you see it. Start by composing the shot, then take lots of images with different focus points. The idea is to have multiple images that are virtually identical, with only the focus point changing. You must have a tripod!
In the Studio
Now we need to get the images into Photoshop as layers, and there are a couple ways to do this.
- Select the four images in Lightroom, then you can right-click and see the following menu.
- Select Edit In 〉Open as Layers in Photoshop
- Be patient, and the layers will appear in Photoshop.
You can skip Lightroom, and pull the files directly into Photoshop, like this:
1. File 〉Scripts 〉Load Files Into Stack
2. Browse to locate the files on your hard drive, and select the option 〉Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images. This will save time in step 3.
Pulling it all Together
Now the files are in Photoshop and you should arrange them by focus point, from background to foreground. This is not necessarily by the file name. The layers are renamed to match the focus points marked above.
Auto-Align Layers
This is already done, if you imported the files directly into Photoshop and selected the option, but if you brought in the layers from Lightroom you will need to select all of the layers (notice they are all highlighted in the bottom right corner).
Edit 〉Auto-Align Layers…
Auto-Blend Layers…
This is the final step where the magic happens, and Photoshop does it all! In minutes you have a perfectly focused image.
Edit 〉Auto-Blend Layers… 〉Stack Images
+ Seamless Tones and Colors
+ Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas
If you brought the images in from Lightroom, the stacked image is now in your Lightroom library. If not, then you need to save and export the image directly from Photoshop, and import into Lightroom, or whichever program you use.
Final Image
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