Macro Focus Stacking/Image Stacking Tutorial-How To Do Close-up Digital Photography Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and I'm in the
studio today to talk about image
stacking image stacking is a macro
technique that allows you to get
infinite depth of field across subjects
that are very close up even with a very
high f-stop number it's difficult to get
an entire subject in focus in a previous
video I cover different types of macro
photography equipment you don't need any
special equipment to do image stacking
all you need is a lens that can manually
focus and something as inexpensive as
extension tubes which you can get for as
cheap as 10 or 15 bucks I have here
mounted on my camera proper macro lens
which is kind of the best equipment you
could get but like I said you can get
very similar results using inexpensive
extension tubes the first thing you need
to do for image stacking is to put your
camera on a tripod and put your subject
in front of your camera about at the
minimum focusing distance you want to
make sure that the nearest edge of your
subject is in focus throughout the
course of it you will change the focus
on your lens and take shots at intervals
so that you get one shot of each
different part of the subject in focus
later we'll go back to the computer and
combine those different images into a
single image that shows the entire
subject in focus so let's get started
with the process I'm going to take the
picture of this purple Gerber Daisy
before I do I will spray some water on
it just to make it a little more
attractive now I'll put my camera into
position so that the closest edge of the
subject is in focus and I'll take my
first shot as you can hear it's a very
long shutter speed I have my camera at
ISO 100 which gives me noise free images
and f/13 I'm allow it to auto expose the
subject so I'm going to look at that
first image and I'm going to make note
of the shutter speed that it picked that
was a two-second shutter speed and I'm
going to switch my camera to manual mode
and pick those same settings with my
first shot down I'm going to look at the
image on the preview and see just how
much of the flower is in focus I wanted
in the depth of field because I want to
refocus so that my next shot will
include some overlap sharpness
eventually I want to take enough
pictures of that I get the entire
subject in focus so I have an idea of
where I need to focus next that's going
to be the first point that's a little
bit blurry when I'm zoomed in and I will
zoom in and take another shot now I'll
repeat that process until I've taken 15
or 20 shots that include the entire
flower in focus now let's take those
images and go process them on the
computer back at the computer it's time
to load the images as layers into
Photoshop to load your files click the
file menu select scripts and then select
load files into stack now click the
Browse button and select the files that
you need to load it's helpful if your
files are named in the order they were
taken from the front of the object to
focusing on the back of the object but
cameras usually number pictures
sequentially so this should happen
automatically here I'm clicking on the
first object and then shift clicking on
the last picture to select everything
now in this dialogue you want to select
the automatically attempt to align
source images checkbox that will cause
Photoshop to get everything lined up for
us automatically now I'm going to select
all the layers using the same
shift-click technique select the Edit
menu and then select Auto blend layers
on this dialog box I'll select the stack
images radio button and then click OK
now Photoshop will intelligently blend
the pictures together picking the
sharpest part of each picture combining
it to this result
after photo shops automatic processing I
always have to manually touch it up a
little bit you can see that Photoshop
added layer masks to each of the
pictures that's the little black and
white box next to it quickly the white
parts of the picture shine through
whereas the black parts are hidden so
what you'll see for each picture is that
Photoshop picked these shut parts of the
picture and color it in the layer mask
white for that image for each part of
the final picture only one part is white
now I just need to crop the picture down
if you recall when we were taking the
pictures I warned you that you need to
shoot a little wider than you thought
you need it because of this you'll end
up cutting off the edges of it now's a
good time to take a look at the
judgments that Photoshop made and a
Photoshop picked from the wrong picture
for any part of your image you could go
in and adjust the layer mask so that I
picked from a better picture once you're
done go to the layer menu and merge all
the layers using the merge layer option
this just makes it easier to work with
for example I want to fill in this
corner here using the content-aware fill
this would be rather difficult to do
with the multiple layers but it's easy
to do once you merge all the layers
together here's the finished results
showing the entire flower in focus this
is something that wouldn't have been
possible with a single image regardless
of what camera settings you chose this
is for a chapter 12 of my book stunning
digital photography available at Amazon
now if you buy the book you'll find many
more videos like this embedded in it
videos that you won't find anyplace else
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thanks
now let's take those images and go
process them in the computer every time
I've nailed that