FOCUS STACKING the RIGHT WAY using Adobe Photoshop (HOW, WHY, and WHEN)
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2024
- Most focus stacking tutorials show you what to do when you're in front of your computer, but that just shows you "how" to do it. It's as important to know "why" and "when" to focus stack. So, we're going to start at the actual composition phase in the field.
First, it's important to understand why you why you would want to focus stack based on the lens you're using and the distance to your subject(s). Next, you'll want to make sure that your composition is best suited for a focus stack before taking the shots. You'll also want to be sure that you get the proper focus stack brackets. Finally, it's time to turn to the computer to stack the images together. BUT, there are instances where Adobe Photoshop's auto stacking feature outputs a poor result. So, I'll show you a super easy way to fix that. Let's have some fun!
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Table of Contents:
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00:00 - Introduction
01:13 - What is focus stacking?
03:25 - Setting the right focus mode
04:25 - Pro Tip - Use a polarizer!
04:55 - Taking the foreground photo
06:15 - Taking the middle ground photo
06:51 - Taking the background photo
08:15 - Get better waterfall photos
08:54 - Sending the focus stack brackets to Photoshop
12:21 - Aligning the brackets
14:39 - Focus stacking using Auto Blending
16:25 - Focus stacking using layer masks (the manual way)
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Just an excellent tutorial. No "Hey guys what's happening", no whacko music in the background, not eye popping visual gymnastics, no desk thumping, just lots of good helpful information presented straight up. Well done Brian.
Thanks so much, Stanley! That means a lot. I will admit that there was a phase a few years back where I spent too much time collecting b-roll and trying to pair the perfect soundtrack to the video. Ultimately, it became clear that my audience doesn't want another vlog from me... just to-the-point instruction on things that I care about and find interesting. It certainly makes editing these videos SO much quicker and easier, too.
Excellent video Brian - I recently bought a focus rail to help with flower photography, and now armed with the knowledge from your video, am ready to give it a go! Thanks very much.
Most comprehensive video on stacking photos. Thank you, Brian
Excellent tutorial. Thank you, Brian.
Very informative and fairly easy to carry out. Thank you Brian
So helpful! Thank you, Brian.
I usually align the photos then mask in elements I want in focus. That technique also works for exposure brackets. The only caveat is that you have to be careful and precise with your masks. Refining masks can be one of the most time consuming parts of the process. I've never actually used the automatic option but I will try it next time. I can manually refine the automatic masks to make the perfect image
great stuff BM. thanks.
Thanks for this Brian. I got right up to the last few minutes thinking, "yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all this" and then you added that little nugget at the end and true to form, you added another tool to my tool box. I'm going to have to watch it 3 or 4 times to make sure I totally groak it, but that's cool. So glad to see you stepping up your UA-cam game!
Thanks so much, James! That's the really amazing thing about these applications and techniques. There are so many different ways to approach them and it's why I often times will watch other videos with an open mind... just in case one of those nuggets presents itself.
Very helpful video!! thank you
Great for us newbies..Awesome vid..Thanks
Well informed, loved the in-depth tutorial. I have learned something new thanks.
Really helpful video Brian. I like how you walked us through the shooting in the field and the step by step process in PS.
You’re most welcome, Jim! And yeah, I always feel that it is extra helpful to share the entire process, including when you’re behind the camera. That was especially true with this focus stacking video.
Wonderful thank you.
I've never tried manual stacking, so simple. I'll give it a try now.
Thanks very much Brian
You’re very welcome, Allen!
Very good, thanks Brian! The manual method of blending the layers looks surprisingly easy.
You're welcome! Manually blending the layers with masks is especially easy when there aren't many obstructions throughout the frame and when the bulk of the composition has a repeating or busy pattern such as water, sand, grass, etc.
The first person to mention in a stacking vid 5hat it doesn’t work very well. Well done. I do what you do, the hard way!
Also, if you're close to the 1st subject you're depth of field will be narrower than if all three subjects were a long way away. l Excellent video. I saved it & subscribed.
Hi Brian, I've watched a lot of videos on focus stacking and this one is by far the best I've seen. I like to shoot very high resolution photos which take a ridiculous amount of time to auto blend - this was putting me off focus stacking - your manual masking method will be a game changer for me. Thank you.
Thank you so much for the kind words, Kev! I’m thrilled to hear that the video was helpful!
Nice, concise and very clear. Thanks
You're very welcome, Doug!
Mr. Matttash, I do a lot of focus stacking (even handheld) and thou used a different methods, I have found your manual way great. Thank you, sir. Now following you and will give your channel a look see.
Thanks so much for the sub and the kind words, John!
Thank you. Probably the most helpful and sensible instruction on focus stacking tut I have ever watched. I've been focus stacking for years and now I know how to do it really well. One question: after you've finished masking in the focus on your back and middle grounds, would running the Auto-blend action be helpful, or not or is it simply not not necessary?
Thanks so much for the kind words! That means a lot :)
Your question is an interesting one and it's certainly something that I never considered. To be honest, every time I've manually focus stacked using layer masks, the results have been great. So, it wouldn't occur to me to run the auto-blend action as a result. Still... I will give it a shot and see if the results are any better. Thanks for the idea!
Brian, great "next level" focus stacking method. I have two questions; 1. In LR what about doing lens correction before going to PS? 2. If you use auto stacking in PS, what about deleting the merged layer and editing the masks PS created vs doing it from scratch? Great video! Thanks, Ron
Thanks for watching and commenting, my friend! As for your questions:
1. I am hesitant to do any sort of geometric corrections to the pre-stacked brackets because I've experienced some issues with the Auto-align step in Ps. If I remember correctly, the lens metadata carries through to the focus-stacked photo, so in theory, you should be able to apply the lens correction afterwards. I'll test that out more, though.
2. I've tried that very thing several times and I just couldn't get a good result. My finessing the auto-generated masks always results in a worse result. In those cases, I just do what I showed in the video and manually mask the layers together.
@@brianmatiash 😎🤙
Hey Ron, I'm surprised you have time for photography too, lol. Hope all is good with you. Cheers.
Good one, I may share this if it's ok because it's easier than me trying to explain to friends what to do ! Thanks Brian.
Please do! I hope it helps!
@@brianmatiash Thanks Brian, appreciate it. Cheers.
One thing you didn't mention is that if you're going to focus stack you might as well use the sharpest aperture. But I have a question for you. Right now I have a polarizer, a 6 stop and 10 stop ND filters. There's times when I need to stop down to f/16 just to get the shutter speed where I need it because I don't have a 3 stop ND filter. Would it be better to shoot everything at f/8 for the best sharpness and then stop down to f/16 for the water on the waterfalls? Since the water is blurred it won't matter if the focus is soft on the water. I've had times when there was wind and I had to take the nd filter off, raise the ISO and use a faster shutter speed to keep the leaves from being blurred and then changed my settings and put the filter back on to blur the water. I'm getting pretty good in Photoshop so the editing part is no issue. I know how to do exposure blending and focus stacking. I also like to put an Orton effect on the water.
Why not use the Sony commander for this as then you do not risk any camera movement? Nice layer mask example. Thanks
Hi Brian, first a wonderful explanation/demo, maybe the best I have seen on stacking, but can I ask a question please, and that is if we are shooting RAW, and importing into LR first etc before exporting to PS, then surely because they are RAW, there is no point in doing some basic edits FIRST to each image as you suggest, why not just do them globally to the finished stacked single image upon completion? Thanks in anticipation.
Internal focus lenses do less size changes at different focus points since the objective lens does not have to move.
This has been a big help. I have a landscape photo with 3 images and the clouds show motion blur with their movement. The problem I have with this method is the only thing I want to focus in is the sky. But this method makes me do the whole thing which creates issues in the foreground where I have tall grasses from the foreground overlapping middle sections, essentially competing for focus. Trying to brush in focus for every blade of grass is tedious beyond measure and downright impossible. I wonder if there is a way to use "select sky" and do the same as you are illustrating here. I am new and trying to figure this all out. Great video though.
Well, I thought about it and because after the blend is completed, that creates a new layer which is now separate from the sky layer I want at the top of my image. The only way in theory that I could create an image with the sky from the furthest back image is to take that sky and replace the other two images with that sky then do my merge. However, I have no idea how to do that. Maybe you could make a video in that! Thanks.
Just getting into macro photography, and focus stacking would be very useful because of the usually very shallow D of F.
Question: Does Photoshop Elements 15 have the focus stacking capability?
Many thanks, in advance, from a NEW subscriber.
I'm not sure whether PS Elements supports focus stacking because I don't have a license for it. However, a basic Google search should give you all the answers you need.
We call it focus breathing when the compositions is changing a bit. Some lenses have less focus breathing than others.
Do you recommend shooting wider than desired, Brian, to allow room for cropping (post Ps layers align) to the actually desired composition?
That's a very good point. To be honest, I hadn't considered it much, but yes, I would absolutely factor in some cushion by going a little wider when you know that you're going to focus stack. As illustrated in this video, I did lost a non-nominal chunk of the comp simply because I had to change my focus point. So, if you're dead set on having a certain composition, I'd step back a bit or zoom out wider to budget for the likely loss of information that will result from the auto-align step.
Thx for your reply, Brian!
Dear Brian, thanks for this tutorial
I have a problem. When i select the images in lightroom and i click on Open as Layers in photoshop it doesn't work properly.
the program opens just a single file + an empty level in photoshop
Could you give me a solution?
Thank you
Great thank you. Do you have master class for PS?
I don’t currently have a course that focuses on PS, but I do have one that is deeply involved with Lightroom. The course dives into PS in some of the videos, but it’s not 100% Photoshop. www.matiash.com/adobe-lightroom-editing-masterclass
@@brianmatiash Thank you. I have already purchased the LR
Wonderful! Thank you so much for your support ☺️ and I hope you enjoy the course!
After auto blend layers , how do I get a merged arw file back to Lightroom?
If you sent them to PS from Lightroom, then all you need to do is save the merged file in Photoshop. The merged pano will already be in your catalog.
When you say polarizing filter is that a physical filter on the lens or ?
Correct. An actual filter that sits in front of the lens.
At the pure end, you just do flatten the image? nice video.
Yeah, I typically merge all of the visible layers together into a new layer. In most cases, I may also delete the underlying layers to save space, especially if I won’t need them anymore.
It's nice to keep the base image just Incase you mess up. When you're done you can "flatten visible" you can also just flatten certain layers and keep some septate.
Brian, why do you show that horizontal thingie in your videos? It's not needed. It's distracting. Don't you see it?
Why do you use lightroom in a video about how to stack using photoshop!?
What an odd question to ask. If you watch the video, you’ll see that I use Lightroom because that’s where I import and manage my focus brackets, as do many of the people who follow me. There’s a way to send multiple photos from Lightroom to Photoshop on their own layers in a single document, which is required for focus stacking. So, why *wouldn’t* I show that part of the workflow? If you’re not a Lightroom user, then you can skip that section.
Helicon Focus software is much better than Photoshop .