06 September 2011

stacked photos


I have been hoping to try stacking photos to get more depth of field in my macro photography for years. I finally had a chance to try it out. As it turns out, the last few versions of Photoshop have the ability to do the job. There are a few separate software that do the same thing, but I am not sure they are actually better.

Stacking involves (in my case) taking a series of macro photos with different areas in focus and literally stacking on top of each other on different layers then telling photoshop to blend the layers. While blending, photoshop determines the areas in focus and masks out the blurred areas. This can give you an incredibly in focus detailed image not possible with normal macro.

While not perfect, it does make for some interesting images, even with this first try. This particular mage took a bit of additional manual manipulations and alignment to get it looking ok.

2 comments:

T' said...

Worked out incredibly well. That's a hell of an image, Vince!

Behemoth media said...

There are more on my flickr. I am still a little disappointed in the final results. I think I just expected far too much from the technique. I also think it can be improved with some changes so I'll have ot find a new subject!