7. The Menus / 7.7 The Filter Menu
Focus stacking is about increasing the sharpness of a subject that you want to photograph. Especially in macro photography, the problem arises that often only parts of a subject can be focused.
This is where Focus Stacking comes in. You take several pictures of the subject, shifting the focus point in each photo. Focus Stacking then calculates a sharper overall image from these images.
With Add Image(s) you can add the images you want to combine to the image list. Usually, however, it is easier if you select the necessary images in the Browse panel (chapter 5.4) and call the Focus Stacking via the context menu of Browse. Then the selected images are automatically taken over.
You can create two types of result:
If you have taken your pictures without a tripod, you can align them with Align. However, this only works to a certain extent. Basically, it is better to take the individual images with a tripod.
The remaining settings control how the result is calculated.
Tip: Calculating a focus stack can take some time. If you want to carry out tests with different settings and especially if you have also activated Align, it makes sense to first work in the Create Sum Layer mode. This way you get a document that contains the aligned single images and at the top the sum image. If you now want to try out Focus Stacking with other values, you only have to delete the sum image and call the function again. Since the individual images are already aligned, you do not have to do this again for the subsequent calls.