How To FOCUS STACK In Photoshop For PERFECT Sharpness

[@HoutmeyersP]

Thank you very much....at last a non complicated and clear explanation on how you correct the photoshop " quirks". Subscribed and a thumb up :)

[@MarkDumbleton]

I appreciate that @houtmeyersP - thanks for the subscription. Plenty more to come.

[@sandiegophoto64]

Best one on focus stacking I've seen. Thanks dude!

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks so much for that positive feedback! Glad it was helpful!

[@PaoloCugudda]

Hi Mark, thank you for the tutorial. Very useful, well done and very clear to understand. Greeting from Italy. Paolo

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hi Paulo, thanks so much for the comment, truly appreciated! Thanks for watching!

[@Mr09260]

Brilliant Mark >> just what I am looking for a a Photoshop user

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching Peter! I have a lot of new Photoshop tutorials coming soon. Is there anything in particular you would like to see?

[@Mr09260]

Can I edit them in Photoshop first as I am still battling with Light room set up etc >> Got Kelbys book on LR but still confused but PS I have used forever basically .. not advanced > Please do one on PS method of doing Panoramas and Stiching for Landscapes

[@MarkDumbleton]

I’ve got a pano / stitching one in the pipeline. Should be out within a month or so. Thanks for the ideas.

[@ClareCC0902]

Nice, clear tutorial - thanks Mark.

[@MarkDumbleton]

My pleasure, thanks for watching.

[@PhotoTrainer]

Thanks for an excellent no-nonsense tutorial. Heard of focus stacking but have not had a need until now; this gets me started. I actually like the fact i can massage the masks after psd sets them up. It is part of the fun and craft. If not responsibility as a printmaker. I subscribed because you have great content AND did not beg for it. This tells me you are not dependent on algorithmic approval and kookoo for klics in an over monetized world. Thank You! 🙏 ~TEU

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks so much for the kind words, it’s appreciated a lot!

[@peterhamilton8913]

Thanks Mark for this excellent tutorial. I am relatively new to Photoshop and found this video perfect for where I am at now. Photostacking is my next assignment !

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hey @peterhamilton8913 thanks so much for the comment. Super happy you found the video helpful. Thanks for watching. If you have any questions reply here and I’ll be sure to help out.

[@ujjwalmukherjee4384]

Excellent! Thanks!

[@MarkDumbleton]

My pleasure, thanks for the comment!

[@p0sher]

Excellent presentation and explanation! Clear and concise! Great work my friend! Thank you!

[@MarkDumbleton]

I really appreciate your time watching the video, and thanks for the comment.

[@bigc5788]

Oh man thank you! I’ve been looking on how to do this

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hope you found the video useful, thanks for the comment!

[@jledvinka]

really helpful video - thank you

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks so much for watching. I really appreciate the comment!

[@rugbynyinc]

Very helpful.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks so much for letting me know.

[@A_journey_with_the_Noble_Quran]

Thank you very much, if you can apply this method on microbiology

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching. You can definitely use this feature on macro photography, it will just take a lot more frames with smaller focus increments.

[@movieclipmicrocosm1153]

Informative Video. Thanks. Seems exporting images as layers directly to photoshop only works in Lightroom Classic. In regular Lr the option either isn't available or I haven't found it yet. Lightroom Classic no problem.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching and for the comment. Interesting to hear it’s not available in regular Lr. I’ll read up about that and see if there is an alternative.

[@carolbell4550]

Thankyou so much Mark..... I have done focus stacking for macro but never landscapes. Learnt so much and cannot wait to give it a go. My only problem is I not been able to open PS from LR (edit in) unless I open as a smart object and then rasterize the photo......I cannot open in PS "as layers at all". I contacted the help line and have been told my laptop is too old and must go back to version 20 in PS> am very disappointed. Really sad as I don't know what I am missing in PS>>>

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching Carol. Ah that’s a real bummer!

[@albertfourie6631]

What a great video mark - I am new at trying these things so question is - how do you focus when taking these landscape photos? Do you manual focus and adjust or do you spot focus etc? keep up the great work.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hi Albert, firstly thanks so much for watching and for the comment. You can focus either in manual focus and adjust, or you can change the focus point and adjust. You always start with a focus point on the very bottom of the frame, and work towards the background. Some cameras have an automated focus stack feature. What camera are you using?

[@albertfourie6631]

@@MarkDumbleton Thanks Mark will definitely try this tomorrow lol. I have the Sony A7iv - don't think it has the build in stacking

[@MarkDumbleton]

Ah bummer ok. Take multiple shots with different focus points. If you look at Thule thumbnail of this video, you’ll see a 1,2 and 3. That is roughly the focus point areas I used to capture that image. If you are very close to something, you’ll need to use a lot more focus points throughout the composition.

[@robertokruger5131]

Hi Mark, great video! Really helpful as a fellow photographer trying to learn to do landscapes. Just one question - for some reason, when I try to export the final product, it's really low res? Not sure how you export it at max quality

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching Roberto and glad you found it helpful. What are your export settings coming out of Lightroom? I can’t think of a reason why Photoshop would down sample to low res?

[@robertokruger5131]

@@MarkDumbleton I'll have to double check, but as far as I'm aware it should be full res. I'll do some experimenting! Thanks again

[@MarkDumbleton]

Cool man! Shout if you don’t come right.

[@sajjadal-lawati3133]

Thanks for the video , this action can not be done in the lightroom as merge HDR , and what is the difference between processing it first in lightroom then photoshop , can it be done reverse i.e. first in photoshop the lightroom as final image ... Thanks

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for watching and for the comment. We unfortunately can’t use merge to HDR, as that will only merge the tones of each frame, and won’t merge according to sharp areas. It would be great if Lightroom gave us a Focus stack merge! You can edit the image after merging the focus stack, but you’ll use the capability of working on RAW data. I would highly suggest doing as much editing as you can before on the raw files. After the stack, you can do final adjustments n the whole image.

[@sydneymoitoso2776]

Great video! Not sure if you’re able to help but I have images up in LR but the option to edit as layers in PS is grayed out. Do you happen to know why?

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hi there. Do you have multiple images selected? If you only have 1 image selected it will be greyed out. Select multiple images and try. Please do let me know if it’s still greyed out and we can figure out why that’s happening.

[@sydneymoitoso2776]

@@MarkDumbleton thanks for the reply! I did have multi photos selected and still grayed out. Strange!

[@MarkDumbleton]

That’s very strange. Only thing I can think of is Lightroom thinks photoshop isn’t installed. Maybe try reinstalling Photoshop?

[@kestrel929]

Did you convert your images from RAW at some point in Lightroom? When I try this I end up with 2 images in Photoshop - 1 with background layer and another single image; no layers like your video.

[@MarkDumbleton]

When you push the images into Photoshop from Lightroom, they are converted from RAW to TIFF. You’ll need to combine both files into 1 document. When you’re in Lightroom, select both files and choose to edit as layers in Photoshop.

[@Albertoabrian]

Thankyouu…

[@MarkDumbleton]

And thank you for watching 😊 hope you found it helpful.

[@Suhailkhan53]

Nice video indeed. I don’t know why the photos from the Lightroom do not open in the latest version of photoshop after it got updated. 😊

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for the message @suhailkhan53, have you by any chance installed Photoshop Beta and then uninstalled it? I did that and then my images wouldn’t open from Lightroom into Photoshop.

[@waldemarkruk9128]

@@MarkDumbleton I uninstalled PS Beta before updating to the next version!! And this was a mistake because the updated version of PS Beta did not work!! When updating PS Beta leave the old one as it is and run the update of PS Beta and then it is no problem for the updated PS Beta to work OK.

[@timelinefilmsweddingevents5764]

If I don’t have light room can’t I stack focus only in photoshop?

[@MarkDumbleton]

You can just use Photoshop, load the files into Photoshop and use the same procedure.

[@cawrtnei]

my layers are selected but the option for Auto-Align is greyed out. do you know why?

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hi, are any of your layers smart objects? You can’t auto align smart objects. If some of your layers are smart objects, rasterizing them will allow you to auto align. Let me know if that worked.

[@cawrtnei]

@@MarkDumbleton first of all thank you for replying so quickly! And second, yes that worked! Thank you so much. I'm a student so I thought this hiccup would hold me back from continuing an assignment. Thanks so much! 🤗🤗

[@thomascampanis]

Why don't I have the "edit in" option in my dropdown menu in Lightroom?

[@MarkDumbleton]

There could be a couple reasons… is the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop installed, and the older versions removed?

[@thomascampanis]

I believe it is the latest but I can check. I did find a work around going directly through photoshop. @@MarkDumbleton

[@MotherChicken2]

note that if you import the photos manually and have a "background layer" the "Auto align" and "Auto stack" features will be grayed out.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for the comment. Absolutely right. The background layer must be unlocked to perform the align and stack.

[@tdawg719]

its only allowing me to save as a tiff, how do i save as jpeg?

[@MarkDumbleton]

If you flatten the layers, change the mode to 8 bit, it will allow you to save as a jpg. If you have all the layers still intact I don’t think Photoshop can save as a jpg.

[@madcat1007]

You could have shown how to Sync the 3 files before exporting to Photoshop instead of just saying "I've copied those changes over to the other two". Otherwise pretty good demo.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for the recommendation.

[@tdawg719]

my brush tool isnt painting in the areas I dont want. any ideas?

[@MarkDumbleton]

Hi, is your brush opacity up to 100%? Have you selected the colour brush correctly?

[@tdawg719]

@@MarkDumbleton yes both. I paused the screen and made sure everything matched

[@MarkDumbleton]

Are you painting on the correct layer, if you’re painting on a layer below the top one you won’t see any changes. Maybe something is in front of what you are trying to paint? Send me a screen shot of your screen in photoshop to [e-mail] , and I can try figure out why it’s happening.

[@tdawg719]

@@MarkDumbleton yes I’m making sure the layer is selected and the eye ball is only on that layer. I’ll send a link do a screen capture video later

[@larslarsman]

Too much work. What software program simply combines your photos for focus stacking without all the work you are doing? Some cameras do it internally without you having to post-edit your photos.

[@MarkDumbleton]

Thanks for the comment, there are paid apps you can use that does it automatically but I’ve never used them

[@niclasbagenheim7181]

I failed miserably, but got a few steps closer probably:-(

[@MarkDumbleton]

Please do shout if you have any questions, and I can try and help you out.