Focus Stacking: Capture, Prepare, and Blend Sharp Images

When focus stacking helps

Use stacking when a stationary subject has more depth than one exposure can render sharply at a practical aperture. Macro subjects and small products are common examples. A landscape with a close foreground can also benefit, provided leaves, water, clouds, and camera movement do not make the blend harder than the original problem.

Keep a single exposure when it already provides enough depth of field. Stacking adds capture time, files, alignment, and retouching. It is a poor fix for a subject that moves between every frame.

Capture overlapping focus planes

Secure the camera and subject, finish the composition, and leave a little room for alignment and cropping. Use manual exposure and a fixed white balance so frames match. Choose an aperture that balances detail and depth of field; f/5.6 to f/8 can be a starting experiment on a larger sensor, not a rule for every lens or magnification.

Focus on the nearest detail that must be sharp. Advance focus through the subject in small steps until the farthest required detail is covered. The sharp areas must overlap. High magnification requires more, smaller steps than a distant scene. An arbitrary count such as five frames cannot guarantee coverage.

Use a remote release or delay and allow flash recycling between exposures. If the camera has focus bracketing, learn its step-size behavior with a test subject. For extreme macro, a focusing rail can help, but moving the camera can also change perspective and complicate alignment.

1. Make a nearest-focus frame and inspect it at full magnification.
2. Advance focus in small increments while keeping exposure and framing steady.
3. Continue past the last required detail, then check coverage before moving the subject.
4. Keep a single-frame reference so you can compare the blend and repair moving areas.

Prepare in Lightroom Classic; blend in Photoshop

Apply matching basic adjustments to the bracket in Lightroom Classic. Select the frames and use Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. You can also load source files as layers directly in Photoshop if your workflow does not use Lightroom Classic.

Select the layers in Photoshop. Run Edit > Auto-Align Layers, using Auto as a starting choice. Then run Edit > Auto-Blend Layers and choose Stack Images. Inspect the generated masks and composite, crop alignment edges, and save a layered file before making a flattened delivery copy. These instructions refer to the desktop applications.

Repair halos, movement, and missed focus

Inspect high-contrast edges, fine hairs, transparent surfaces, and transitions from front to back. Switch individual source layers on and off to find a genuinely sharp version of a problem area. Refine the mask locally when one frame contains a cleaner edge; keep the original layers available.

A missing focus plane is different from a bad mask. If no source frame contains a sharp patch, the blend cannot recover real detail there. Reshoot with smaller focus increments. If the subject shifted, use a single source for that moving region or choose a simpler image.

Adapt the method to macro and landscapes

For macro, check the entire subject depth and include the frontmost antenna, petal, or label edge. Keep the setup sheltered from vibration and drafts. More frames increase your chances of coverage but also increase processing time and opportunities for movement.

For a landscape, focus on the foreground and progressively farther areas while keeping the camera fixed. Avoid changing aperture between frames. Windblown vegetation may need one source frame retained in the final image. Review the result at full size before deleting or archiving the bracket.