cameraiamera

Dad suggested that I go into a little more detail about how I’m doing these focus stacks.  Obviously you can just Google focus stacks and follow the instructions, but I have an adjusted method that seems to work. Whereas some of the walkthoughs want 3-10 pictures, I use in the neighborhood of 50.  You’ll need a tripod, computer with Photoshop (more horsepower = less waiting) and either a camera with a continuous shoot option or a lot of patience.

1. set up your tripod, frame your subject as you normally would.
2. switch to manual and roll your focus all the way out.
3. shooting continuously, slowly roll the focus all the way in. if you aren’t shooting continuously, be diligent in slowly incrementing your focus change. take as many pictures as you feel necessary, but remember more data is better.
4. copy the photos to your computer
5. i’m using CS5. Open it and go to File – Scripts and Load Files into Stack…
6. browse to your photos and select all the photos for the project.
7. make sure any Align Photos option is checked and click Okay. The more pictures you have, the longer this will take.
8. once the Load into Stack and Align operations are done, select all the layers in the layer viewer.
9. click Edit, then Auto-Blend Layers… and choose the stack option. Make sure Seamless is checked and click Okay.
10. Wait. This will take a while.  Crop the resulting image, save as a jpeg and you’re done.