Focus Stacking

I have previously discussed High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, in which one merges photos with different levels of exposure.

I have just learned another trick; Focus Stacking.

When I am taking a portrait photo of a single person, I usually set the aperture of the lens to a wide aperture, in order to give a shallow depth of field, and blur out the background in order to emphasise the face.

Thus recently I was taking some photos of some relatives of George's. I had my Fujifilm X-E3 with its 50mm prime lens set wide at f/2.0.

When I left the room, George's brother Ken picked up my camera and took some shots of the two relatives, without changing the aperture.

He is in focus; she isn't.

She is in focus; he isn't.

This raises the idea of somehow combining the two photos to get a copy in which they are both in focus.

This is how to do it.

Open the photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic. (You also need to have Adobe Photoshop on the computer.)

Select both photos.

Then go to the menus in Lightroom: Photo/Edit In/Open as Layers in Photoshop....

Next, in Photoshop, select the layers. 

Then, in Photoshop, go Edit/Auto-Align Layers... This corrects any misalignment such as occurs especially if the camera was hand-held.

Choose the Auto option.

Next Edit/Auto-Blend Layers...

Choose 'Stack Images'.

Voilà! Now save your focus stacked image and continue to process it in Lightroom.

Both in focus.

How to Use Focus Stacking for Landscape Photography