Focus stacking help

[Gorf]

Hi

This is my first image posted on this forum & also my first try at focus stacking. I'd appreciate suggestions how to do this better. The shot is made of 9 images & stacked in Photoshop CC. Should I take more images?

My editing software of choice is Lightroom CC. Should I stack in Photoshop, then bring back to Lightroom for editing, or edit in Lightroom first? The method here was to stack in Photoshop, then save as a TIF back into Lightroom. It didn't seem to work too well for me as the process felt untidy & I'm not sure I should have been dealing with a TIF. (Originals in RAW.)

Nikon D810 + Nikkor 105mm f2.8 @ f13, 1/60sec, ISO 64. Shot outdoors in natural light. Tripod with 2sec timer, manual focus, matrix metering.

[Black Pearl]

Firstly you want to open the aperture a couple of stops - it'll help with overal sharpness.
Use the smallest steps you can manage to give the software more sliced to work with - a focus/macro rail would be a great addition to your kit.
My personal preference is to do the basic processing of the raw files (WB etc) in Lightroom first making sure they're all linked and identical - any variation will upset the stack so take care.
Once the files are stacked (I use HeliconFocus) then hit them with any creative stages.

[Gorf]

Thanks for the reply, Robin

[DanK]

Nick,

In practice, you only only need more images in the stack if there are regions that are not sufficiently in focus. As long as you have in-focus detail as far forward and back as you want, you are fine. What I would do is blow it up to 100% and then examine it, moving front to back, to see if you have any insufficiently sharp regions.

I agree with Robin--you probably would get slightly more sharpness at a slightly wider aperture, say, f/8, but I doubt you would notice the difference unless you print large.

I always change white balance (if it needs changing) while the file is still in raw format. It would make sense to adjust tonality in Lightroom first as well, although I only do that infrequently. (I shoot flowers mostly under controlled lighting, so I generally don't need extensive tonality adjustments.) That's all I do before stacking. I do everything else to the stacked TIFF, either in Lightroom or in Photoshop.

Some people suggest sharpening before stacking because it may help the software align the images, but I don't do that.

Re Robin's suggestion of a rail--no harm in using one, but I don't find it necessary at the degree of magnification you are doing. I actually own a good rail, but I have never used it for focus adjustments. I just use it to give me more control over positioning of the camera (along with a geared head). It works just fine to adjust focus with the lens rather than using a rail. You can check my flower and dried flower shots on the web. Almost all of them are stacked, and all were done by focusing with the lens. If you don't have a rail, you might want to see if you can borrow one before purchasing one.

On the other hand, if you want to get into high levels of magnification, then you would want to control the distance between shots very carefully, and a rail would be a big help (at least for me).

[Gorf]

Thanks Dan

As you can see, I'm not looking for extra high magnification, so I'm not sure a rail is needed. The 105mm lens is very sharp up to f16.

[DanK]

Hi Nick,

I go comfortably somewhat over 1:1 (adding extension tubes) without using a rail for focusing, although most of my flowers are less magnified.

Re aperture: the effective aperture becomes smaller (higher f/stop) as you get closer to 1:1 in macro work. My Canon shows nominal f-stop, not effective f-stop. I think your Nikon may show effective f-stop. If that is the case, you can go to a higher number than I can (roughly twice as high at 1:1) without getting softness from diffraction. This is explained in one of the tutorials on this site.

The bottom line, however, is appearance: if it looks good, it is.

Dan

[Geoff F]

If you have Adobe Photoshop CC then I fail to see any reason for using Lightroom at all; providing you have added on the free Bridge download option for viewing images etc.

What I do with my stacking is to do basic editing on the Raw files in ACR then transfer them directly to the main editing window where I drag the images together as one stack. Turn the bottom image into a layer and go to the Align Layers option followed by Blend Layers. After merging the result its a job done.

Any additional editing is simple and very effective with the Photoshop CC. No need to switch to any other software.