"Stacking" Question

eminart

I read about "stacking" in the thread here, and I downloaded the CZ_something program to use. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. But, I've been thinking................. If the shots were taken with a tripod, couldn't you just take the different shots, put them on layers in photoshop, and then erase the unfocused areas on the top layers? Wouldn't that work just as well?

Corehead

Even in CS3, you'd have to have the "patience of Job" to do all that erasing!

Give that CombineZP a try though. However, if you can download the earlier CombineZM, you might find that to be easier to attain decent stacking results with.

Lord Vetinari

You can stack photos in PS by hand - either using layers of by using the repair brush to copy in focus areas. I believe CS4 has a focus stacking routine built in but do not know how good it is.

Depending on the size of the stack and how clean the image type is it's just a lot faster to use stacking software.
Brian v.

GOLDENORFE

agree with Brian, but i have been stacking by layers in ps quite a bit recently,mainly 2-3 frames. anything complicated just use the software.
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Candid Arts

So what is the difference between focus stacking and just shooting with a wider DOF? Is one better than the other? If using a narrow DOF and focus stacking is said to be better, I thought shooting a lens - 1-2 stops is actually a sharper image? So would that just be better in the first place? Then no worrying about stacking the photos in software?

GOLDENORFE

the greater the magnification the less dof you get.
using a smaller apperture to increase dof will produce a softer less detailed image due to diffraction softening.
up to x2 magnification f8 produces the best detail, so stacking multiple frames produces an image with far more detail & much greater dof than a single image even at smallest apperture could produce.
greater mag than x2 diffraction softening increases dramaticaly,stacking frames shot at f5-f6.5 produce sharpest results

eg 1 frame f11


9 frames at f8


remember dof is only a couple mm at these magnifications even at f22

jax

Amazing that second one with 9 stacked frames!
Didn't the caterpillar move at all when you took the shots or where you just fast as hell ? :-)

Either way, great image!

eminart

Cool, thanks for the replies. So basically, it CAN be done in PS but it gets too time consuming if there are a lot of images involved?

I have CS3, I'll probably be upgrading to CS4 soon, so I'm anxious to check out the new focus stacking utility someone mentioned here.

And that caterpillar may be the sharpest image I've ever seen. What lens is that?