Focus stacking in Photoshop CC

The laws of physics often tend to thwart the images we have in our minds. The physics we're dealing with here is the fact that as we get closer to our subject, our depth of field gets smaller and smaller. Unfortunately, stopping down further and further is often not an option because then diffraction can adversely affect the quality of your image, especially at the smallest aperture values.
Another disadvantage, especially with macro photography, is that the background becomes restless. Often an even background, which you only get with an open aperture, is more pleasant for the image. Focus stacking can be your solution in these kinds of situations. We can now create an image where your entire subject is sharp, but the background is still nicely blurred.
thanks to the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom 6 and Photoshop CC, this is also very easy to apply.

Get started with focus stacking!

The recordings

What we need is a tripod and a camera, the sturdier the tripod, the better the result will be. The smallest deviations in your recordings can make merging and rectifying the images more difficult. When you have your subject in focus, put the camera in full manual mode. This way you get an equal series of images that improves the final end result. So: manual ISO, aperture, shutter speed, but ALSO manual focus!

The trade-off for your aperture is probably the most important one you have to make, it determines, among other things, the number of images you need to take, but also the result of your final focus stack. You can choose to use the optimal aperture of your lens, i.e. the value that gives you the sharpest image. I myself often choose the aperture where I keep the nice soft background.

Once you've made your choice, the process itself is quite simple. You work in 1 direction: from back to front or from front to back. Your first image where you want your sharp image to start and your last image where you want the sharpness to end. Depending on the thickness of your subject, your aperture and the margin of error you want in your final photo, this can be done in 3 to 10 frames.

Now that you have a set of RAW images you can start editing.

editing

I use an English version of Photoshop CC, but I expect that you can easily find your way in your own version based on my images and explanations.

Step 1:

Use Adobe Bridge/Camera Raw or Lightroom to find your original images. Once you have found them, you can edit all your RAW images here to make adjustments in lighting, shadows, highlights, etc. Make sure that you edit all images in exactly the same way or your final image will show deviations!

Step 2:

Now that you've sorted out your images, you can import them into Photoshop CC as individual layers. In Bridge this is done with “Tools > Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers”. In Lightroom you can find this under “Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop”.
You can also load the images directly into Photoshop by means of “Files > Scripts > Load files into stack”, the advantage is that you can immediately check “attempt to automatically align source images”

Step 3:

If you haven't automatically aligned the images yet, do so now. Select your layers and use Photoshop's auto align layers. Then go to edit > auto blend layers and you're done.

Step 4:

It's like magic, but if all goes well you now have a pretty spectacular image with which you can get started. It is possible that some layers have not been inserted properly and still require adjustments to your mask. But normally your image is ready for further processing.

As long as you plan well how you want your image to look, this can come in handy in some situations. You probably won't use it every day, but for emergencies this is a handy trick to master. Have fun!