How to merge Focus Stacking images in Photoshop

Gary Friedman demonstrates how to use Photoshop to merge individual focus stacked images to ensure everything is razor sharp. Check out these videos to show how to use focusing stacking:
on Fujifilm cameras: • How to do Focus Stacki...
on Sony (and other) cameras: • Focus Stacking on Sony...
on Olympus cameras: (Olympus cameras do the merging for you in-camera; no need to use the techniques outlined in this video.) • Focus Stacking for Oly...
This is from the Friedman Archives Blog Post on Focus Stacking. You can see all of the content here: friedmanarchiv...

[@waldemarkruk9128]

Using focus stacking in one program, PS, instead of two, PS + Lt, is GREAT!! Most educators, including Adobe, use Lt+PS!! Thanks a lot!

[@FriedmanArchives]

You're quite welcome!

[@rodtaylor7690]

At last, a genuinely easy way to understand the process of focus stacking in Photoshop that doesn't use Lightroom first. Thanks so much Gary :)

[@rendermanpro]

Great tutorial, straight to the point instead of 30 minutes stre-eeeeeeeeeeee-ching to make it artificially long to put more ads. Love short format.

[@FriedmanArchives]

Thanks; glad you like it!!

[@amorlomibao3452]

Thank you Gary. I like your simple way of explaining what needs to be done in focus stacking. It's funny that whenever I attend a lecture, there is always a wise guy who stands up, grabs the microphone then explains as if he is the main speaker. The honorable man however just sits down there, listens, then assimilate what the subject is all about but remain silent.

[@italogiardina8183]

Clear and easy to follow for intended results rather than follow endlessly micro detailed tutorials.

[@martinstajer1826]

A great simple video, thank you! I feel for your waiting, had to upgrade my laptop now because I walked all over the Earth twice before exporting single image in lightroom 😂

[@FriedmanArchives]

Walked the earth twice? Editing all of your images all in one sitting? I suppose that's a good problem to have!!

[@jmosley3722]

Thank you!!! You saved me an hour of work!!!

[@FriedmanArchives]

Based on my experience, I saved you a lot more than that! 🙂

[@juliainman9389]

Excellent!!! Thank you!

[@andrewhillphotosvideos2909]

thank you

[@islandhopperstuart]

Excellent explanation Gary.

[@FriedmanArchives]

Thanks!

[@agnethabergman4701]

Sorry to bump, but found this very helpful on my first attempt at focus bracketing! Thanks for taking the time and also not plugging other things!

[@FriedmanArchives]

You mean like the ebooks I plugged at the end of the video? :-) (And I'm glad you found the video helpful!)

[@delphiprogrammingtutorials2280]

Greetings from sunny, Central Texas! Excellent, easy-to-follow tutorial with superb images as the outcome! Thank you, Gary. I have found that this works particularly well with my Canon kit lenses for overall detail and sharpness! With a tripod, remote shutter release and manual focus, combined with the Live View, you can create one image from many that can easily compete with much more expensive lenses. I can also see that combined with automatic exposure bracketing, the sky's the limit! VERY NICE!!!

[@delphiprogrammingtutorials2280]

By the way, I've used Photoshop and Helicon and find that Photoshop is slightly better most times than Helicon, although both are quite fabulous. I'll work with this more but I think it's safe to say that sticking with Photoshop will likely be just fine. Thanks again, Gary!

[@FriedmanArchives]

So glad you like it!

[@NadimOmran]

Always the best explanations dear Gary

[@FriedmanArchives]

Many thanks!

[@BazzFreeman]

For those of us without Photoshop, Helicon Focus is the go-to tool.

[@FriedmanArchives]

Yes, I was going to say that next. :-)

[@BazzFreeman]

@@FriedmanArchives Hah! One-upped the master.

[@Chuck_Burke]

Hi Gary...thanks again for another well done video. Did you once do a workshop on Maui with Randy Hufford?

[@FriedmanArchives]

Haven't done any seminars in Hawaii to date. But that's a great idea! :-)

[@RonHelton]

Wow, nice!

[@EnglishStrippedBare]

Gary, long time reader first time writer ;) Great video. I've been doing focus stacking like this for a few years now, and I find that PS can be a bit difficult at times. I've never had things go perfect once. Usually I have to eliminate a photo out of the stack, change masking, or something like that. I hope PS gets better at doing it in the future.

[@FriedmanArchives]

Thanks for your feedback! Have you tried Helicon focus, which just does one thing (instead of a billion different things like Photoshop)?

[@EnglishStrippedBare]

@@FriedmanArchives Haven't used it before, but I'll give it a try next time I'm going to do focus stacking. I kind of when through a phase of doing it a few years ago and now I'm over it. lol.

[@rachaelpadman2597]

Thank you for this Gary. If I understand correctly, you are saying that Photoshop decides which bits of which images to use -- you don't have to select bits of each layer manually? I hadn't realised it could be that simple!

[@FriedmanArchives]

That's pretty much it. Although rarely PS makes a wrong decision, but each of the mask layer are still there so you can go back and make corrections should that ever happen.

[@genesis1177]

Great to the point video. I really like it. I just got the new PS Adobe photoshop 2022 and tried each step by step to see if it would work. It did not. It worked right up until the second I hit edit to open the blend layers and the auto align access lines. The entire scroll box was gray and unresponsive. Only got it to work once by accidently hitting something at the top of the box. When I did I finally I checked the box for stacking and hit ok. The pictures never did come up on screen side by side. Just one at a time when I swiped them from one separate stage to another. Nothing happened. I am not surprised. Nothing on one person's computer or photoshop ever works or looks the same as the people's equipment doing the tutorial. I am so glad I only bought this dog crap version for one month. I 've always thought these photoshops from Adobe were the worst and waste of money. You have to be a computer scientist just to complete one little simple thing. Every 2 minutes they are changing the positions of the icons, the interface, rearranging every stupid box or location of one thing or another. To the point where half the crap you find under File is now found under Edit and vice versa. Too many steps to get to what you need. Last time I will ever deal with Adobe. It is a worthless piece of hardware that only photographers and other professional computer experts can use. Adobe is not for beginners or people who are not an expert at navigating computer software like Adobe. Once something fails to work as you see on a video, you have no clue what to do in order to get it to work. And help lines are worthless. Too expensive for photo software to be this (complicated). Thank you for your video just the same. Much appreciated. But this software hasn't completed one project I have attempted and I have tried them all step by step for batdom. Simply put, this crap doesn't work. I would advise anyone here who has not bought Adobe and is not an expert to NOT buy it at all. It is too much stuff adjoined to it to be honest for the average non-professional to navigate. Try something cheaper with less bells and whistles that never function like they are supposed to. That is my honest assessment and review of Adobe. IT IS THE WORST and most useless software I have ever purchased.

[@AjBProductions]

Thank you for this fine and clear focus stacking tutorial. One quick question if you don't mind. After the images are stacked the file that is created is a tif and is much smaller than the originals were. Are we loosing any clarity or detail (pixel data) with a tif? My canon RAW files can go from 30 GB to less than 2 after focus stacking. Thank you.

[@FriedmanArchives]

That doesn't sound right. The number of pixels in the final file should match your camera's resolution, and the size of TIFF files are famous for being LARGER than RAW files.

[@AjBProductions]

@@FriedmanArchivesThank you for your reply. Sorry, you are correct (I got mixed up between MB and GB). The stacked files are indeed larger than the originals. One more question. Do you recommend editing raw files before focus stacking or after with the tiff? Thanks

[@FriedmanArchives]

@@AjBProductions I have two answers to that: 1) It's a lot less work to do your tweaking on the final combined image. :-) 2) If your light is good and your exposure is right for that light, you might need to edit it at all.

[@AjBProductions]

@@FriedmanArchivesThank you very much! You have a new subscriber.

[@johnbecich9540]

Can I focus stack using Photoshop Elements 2024, rather than "Photoshop"?

[@FriedmanArchives]

Yes but the user interface is different. Check out jtunney.com/focus-stacking-with-photoshop-and-elements/#:~:text=Focus%20stacking%20lets%20you%20extend,images%20into%20a%20single%20photograph.

[@gordons.dempseyii1345]

My pc used 95% of my 40 GB of ram. I had 37 pictures of flowers that I was making into one photo.

[@FriedmanArchives]

When memory is short Photoshop usually uses the hard drive for swap space relief.

[@mtbboy1993]

ARW files seem to be problematic, as most times Photoshop 2023 shows same picture in each layer. It seems to only load the first picture, and other pictures are loaded as the same picture. So stacking does not work for me in Photoshop 2023 with ARW files, but in 2024 CTRL+J to copy layers don't work as it misaligns layers. I don't know all of this is not an issue in older versions.

[@FriedmanArchives]

That certainly doesn't mirror my experience; on the other hand I was using 2022 software. Not unusual for Adobe to introduce new bugs with new versions. :-(

[@mtbboy1993]

@@FriedmanArchives I've reinstalled it and it works now. The same picture in 3 instead of 3 pics I think is due to DRO, which actually seems to just change the JPG not the ARW file, so Photoshop, Lightroom reads it as shot, not the in camera processing, I don't use that mode, just tested it, it seems pointless to me. I get far better results in Lightroom. I don't know why or how the installs cot corrupted, but in 2023 the remove tool could not be loaded. So got an error message saying I should try to reinstall Photoshop.

[@FriedmanArchives]

@@mtbboy1993 At least you were able to resolve the problem!

[@twbrkfd1733]

Three minutes! You need a faster computer or to try Helicon Focus (it's from Ukraine BTW)' would do this in about 10 seconds on a Ryzen 5 3600 3.9ghz CPU.

[@FriedmanArchives]

If I did this sort of thing every day that's EXACTLY what I'd do!