You may be familiar with HDR images, where you take three pictures at different exposures (correctly exposed, underexposed, and overexposed) and combine them to make one HDR image. You follow a similar technique for focus stacking. Take multiple photos at different focus distances and combine them to make a single focus stacked image.
Step 1: Take the Pictures
You need multiple images of the same composition with different focus distances. For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick to three images. Technically, you can focus stack any number of images—macro and product photographers stack numerous photos to get that polished look.
Here are some tips to get your pictures right.
Focus Manually
We highly recommend switching to manual focus on your lens so that you can precisely choose what to focus on. This way, you can also ensure that you have all the essential things in focus. When you use autofocus, you have no control over where your camera focuses.
Keep Steady
Using a tripod is crucial so that your composition stays similar in all the pictures. If there is a big difference, you’ll have trouble aligning them.
If you’re shooting handheld, try to lean onto something to be steady and keep your hands close to your body. Hold your camera with one hand, and use the other hand to adjust the focus ring of your lens. Click all three shots without changing position.
Expose Correctly
Try to keep the lighting and exposure settings consistent for all three shots. This will help you get a seamlessly stacked image. And, if you’re working with natural light, prepare your setup, and take the three photos quickly in succession. If you wait between shots, your lighting may change.
Check Your Composition
In addition, remember not to fill your frame when taking the photos. This may be contradictory to what you’ve heard, but we’re saying this for a good reason; when your images have space around them, you have the option to crop off the unwanted bits after focus stacking.
We recommend shooting RAW images over JPG because you can fine-tune white balance if necessary. Here are some tips for nailing your white balance.
For our example, we have some Lego Duplo figures to help us. We composed a scene with a child and a goat figure in a floral background. With an aperture of f/8, we took three photos with different focus distances. The first photo is focused on the child figure, the second one on the goat, and the third on the flowers in the background.
Step 2: Edit in Lightroom
Import your images to Lightroom and do the basic edits like improving contrast, adjusting shadows and highlights, tweaking clarity and vibrance, and so on. It’s better to edit the first image, copy the settings, and apply them to the other two images to maintain consistency. Read our guide on streamlining your photo editing process to save time.
If you’re cropping the images, don’t crop too tight. Leave space around the pictures, and do not cut off the necessary elements in your scene in any of your three photos. Once you’re happy with your edits, go to the next step.
Step 3: Open as Layers in Photoshop
Go to the Develop module, and select all three photos. Then, go to Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. If your images are in RAW format, this step converts them into a compatible format for Photoshop and opens them as layers.
Step 4: Align the Layers
In Photoshop, select the three layers and go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers.
In the pop-up box, choose Auto under Projection. Under Lens Correction, leave the Vignette Removal and Geometric Distortion boxes unchecked.
This step merges your images based on the content. Once it is done, you may see some artifacts around the edges of your image. But, you can ignore them and carefully crop them out of your photo.
Step 5: Blend the Layers
Go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers.
In the pop-up box, choose Stack Images under Blend Method. Check the Seamless Tones and Colors and Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas boxes.
This step creates layer masks and blends your images together. Finally, you will get the stacked photo with all the areas in focus. In our example, you can see that the child figure, goat, and flowers are entirely in focus.
If you don’t get a nice, clean image, it usually means there is some mismatch between the composition or exposure between the three photos. You can try to salvage the image by editing it. If you’re not happy with the results, you can retake the pictures and start over again.
Step 6: Save the File
Go to File > Save.
Once you save your photo in Photoshop, it will open as a TIFF file in Lightroom. You can tweak your image further or export it as a JPEG image right away. And, that’s it. You’ve finished your first focus-stacked image.
Things to Note
Using Lightroom for focus stacking is optional. If you’re a RAW shooter, you can seamlessly process your RAW files and focus stack your JPEG images with Lightroom and Photoshop. You can avoid the hassle of exporting JPEG images and then processing them in Photoshop.
If you use any other software for RAW processing or have JPEG images at hand, you can skip steps 1 and 2. You can do focus stacking in Photoshop and export it from there.
Photoshop takes up a lot of memory for focus stacking. So, make sure your computer has enough memory, especially if you’re stacking more than a few images. It’s also wise not to use any other heavy software while you focus stack.
Make Your Images Stand Out With Focus Stacking
Focus stacking is a powerful tool to carry in your arsenal. It’s sure to make your images pop and boost your confidence as a photographer. And it’s not even that tricky, just keep practicing until you master it.
