Focus Stacking Using Photoshop

By: Scott Wheaton
08/18/2016

When most people think of focus stacking they think of macro or close up photography, it can also be used for taking all types of photos when you need to obtain a greater depth of field than the settings on your camera currently allow. Tonight we will be taking table top photos (close up photography), but the processing of the photos in Photoshop is the same whether  you are stacking macro or landscape shots.

These are the basic steps in producing a focus stacked image in Photoshop

  1. Your camera needs to be mounted firmly on a tripod or on a stable surface.
  2. Use a cable release if you have one or set your shutter to a 2 sec delay to reduce camera shake.
  3. Set your camera to Manual exposure (You do not want the exposure settings changing between shots.)
  4. You can shoot in RAW but for practice I would recommend shooting in either medium or small jpgs. (This will reduce processing time in Photoshop especially if you have large stacks.)
  5. Set your focus to manual focus
  6. Determine your camera settings to get a good exposure of your subject:
    • ISO
    • Aperture
    • Sutter speed
    • White balance
  7. Focus on the closest item in your image that you want in focus. (As you refocus each shot the field of view will increase slightly and will be cropped off in the final image. Your final image, most likely, will be the size of this first shot)
  8. Take the shot
  9. Turn your lens focus ring till the area in the next part of the image is in focus and take the shot.
  10. Repeat step 9 until you have the entire depth of field you want in focus (this could be as few two shots or hundreds of shots.)
  11. Open your shots in Bridge and select all of the photos you want to stack by clicking on the first photo you took then hold down the shift and click on the last photo you took.
  12. Click on Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers
  13. You should see one image but in your Layers panel you should see all of your photos stacked on top of each other.
  14. The next step is to align the photos in this stack, the top photo in the layers panel should be selected, if not click on it, then scroll down to the bottom image in the stack and hold down the Shift key and click on the bottom image. This should highlight all the images in the stack.
  15. Click on Edit > Auto-Align Layers, on the window that pops up click on Auto and click OK. If all went well this will align all the layers in the stack.
  16. This next step will blend the layers, click on Edit > Auto-Blend Layers, on the window that pops up select Stack Images and click OK. If everything goes OK you now have a focus stack.
  17. To put this stack in a group with all of the images still selected click CTRL + G,  
  18. Make a copy of this group by clicking CTRL + J
  19. Right click on the Group copy and select Merge Group from the menu. This merges the group copy into a flattened image.
  20. You can make adjustments or cropping to this image within Photoshop.