Focus Stacking in Photography: Everything You Want to Know

Thomas Chu Photo

Focus stacking is a capture-and-post technique widely used in modern landscape, still-life and macro photography, delivering photos that are tack-sharp from front to back even in difficult conditions.

In the article below, AdventureX's teacher Miller (Yao Minglai) gives a detailed, systematic summary of focus stacking.

The series of images above all come from AdventureX member Miller (Yao Minglai).

Such dramatic ultra-wide images require placing the wide-angle lens very close to the foreground, creating depth and exaggerated distortion.

That creates a problem: even stopping down to f/64, you can't get a frame that's sharp from the nearest foreground to the distant background (as above).

This is where focus stacking becomes essential. What follows is the most complete focus-stacking guide you'll find.

1. On-Location Capture

The first step of focus stacking is capturing a set of frames whose focal planes together cover the full depth of the scene.

Case 1: Your Camera Has 'Focus Shift Shooting'

If your camera — like the Nikon D850 — has a 'focus shift shooting' function, you can use the body's built-in full-depth capture to easily get a set of frames with focal planes running from nearest to infinity.

Watch the on-location video demonstration by AdventureX member Zhou You below.

Case 2: Your Camera Lacks 'Focus Shift Shooting'

If your camera can't automatically bracket focus, you need to shoot the series manually.

(1) Preparation:

First, bring a sturdy tripod — even slight camera movement complicates the later blend. A reliable shutter release cable is also needed to avoid shake when pressing the shutter.

(Using the self-timer instead of a cable release is not recommended: in fast-changing light, those 2 seconds of delay may cost you the only moment.)

(2) Settings:

Once your composition is set, configure the camera before shooting.

1. Set the camera to aperture-priority mode.

Some ask: why not Manual mode, locking the exposure so the blend is easier?

Manual does keep the series perfectly consistent, but aperture priority instantly computes a reasonable exposure for changing light. When conditions shift fast and light is fleeting, speed matters more.

2. Set image quality to RAW, preserving more highlight and shadow detail for greater editing latitude.

3. Switch the lens from autofocus to manual focus — AF to MF.

4. If your wide-angle lens has stabilization, turn it off: on a tripod it can misfire and actually blur the photos.

5. Set the metering mode to evaluative/matrix (called average or 3D metering on some cameras).

6. Set the aperture.

In strong wind with a dim foreground, use a larger aperture with higher ISO — e.g. f/4 at ISO 800 — to keep the shutter fast enough to freeze the foreground.

With little wind and decent light, stop down further — f/11, f/16. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the depth of field, so fewer frames are needed and efficiency rises.

(3) Shooting Procedure:

First, turn the lens focus ring to the nearest position. The small transparent window on the barrel shows the focus distance change directly.

On mirrorless cameras like Sony, you can read the real-time focus distance on the camera screen.

The example here is the Canon 16-35mm lens: turn to its minimum focus distance, 0.28 m.

Then press the shutter for the first frame.

Next, turn the focus ring slightly toward larger distances and shoot the second frame.

Keep turning slightly further and shoot the third… and so on, until the ring reaches infinity for the final frame.

For example: focus at 0.28 m, 0.35 m, 0.5 m, 1 m, 3 m and infinity, one frame each.

On Canon, Nikon and Sony wide-angles, infinity is usually NOT at the very end of the ring's travel. On Canon lenses, as shown above, turn to infinity then back slightly so the mark aligns with the vertical line of the L-shaped mark just before the infinity symbol — that's true infinity.

How far to turn between frames takes experience. On your first attempt, with a wide aperture, or for a very important scene, turn less and shoot more frames — safer. Generally, 7-8 frames cover the full depth from nearest to farthest.

With ample light and a small aperture, you can turn further between frames — sometimes 3-4 frames cover the full depth.

Tip:

After finishing one focus series, shoot a second full series as insurance — better safe than sorry.

For a video of manual focus stacking, watch AdventureX member Miller's on-location demonstration in the mountains below.

2. Post-Processing

Method 1: Automatic Blending in Photoshop

1. Culling

First import your focus-stacking sets into Lightroom for culling. Compare the sets and zoom into details to decide which set to keep — that becomes your stacking material.

Then examine each frame in the chosen set, comparing focus positions and the sharp zones of each.

When turning the focus ring, some frames inevitably have similar, overlapping sharp zones. Delete the frames whose focal planes overlap heavily, keeping only those whose planes complement each other.

This not only reduces the computer's blending time — more importantly, if it was windy and the foreground flowers or grass moved, too many frames confuse the blending algorithm, causing misalignment and ghosting.

The image above is by AdventureX member Shi Yanbing, shot in exactly the windy conditions I described — strong wind, heavy foreground movement. Below is his description under the work, so you can feel how hard the shooting and blending were:

2. Adjusting

Make basic adjustments in Lightroom to lay the groundwork for blending in Photoshop.

Typically: correct exposure, apply basic grading, denoise and sharpen. After adjusting one photo, apply the same settings to the entire set.

Select all the photos, click 'Sync Settings', check every option, then 'Synchronize'. All adjustments from the one photo are copied to the whole set, keeping their appearance consistent.

Tip:

If the light changed quickly during shooting, exposures may differ between frames. After syncing, fine-tune each frame individually so brightness and white balance are roughly equal.

3. Blending

With basic adjustments done in Lightroom, import all the images into Photoshop.

Select all photos, right-click, choose 'Edit In' → 'Open as Layers in Photoshop'.

All images now load into Photoshop automatically, stacked as layers in one document.

Then select all layers and click Edit → Auto-Align Layers — the software aligns them for you.

This alignment counteracts lens breathing.

When you turn the focus ring, the lens moves its floating elements to focus, and that movement necessarily changes the optical structure — so the focal length shifts slightly.

So even with the camera fixed, the frames show slight distortion and displacement — which is where Photoshop's powerful alignment comes in.

After auto-alignment, white edges appear around the frame — blank extra pixels from the program stretching images to match.

Next, blend the images: still with all layers selected, click Edit → Auto-Blend Layers.

In the dialog, choose 'Stack Images' and check 'Seamless Tones and Colors', then OK — the software starts blending automatically.

Below is the blended result. Each layer now carries a mask, computed automatically: the function finds and keeps the sharpest part of every layer.

Flatten the layers and you have one blended image that's sharp from front to back.

If you shot without a tripod or in strong wind, elements will have shifted — you can't rely entirely on auto-blending. Before this merge step, add one manual step: adjust each layer's mask by hand, painting in the sharp areas with a brush. It takes skill and time.

After flattening, crop away the blank and blurred edges with the Crop tool. So leave breathing room in your composition when shooting — space for the post-crop.

Here's the final cropped photo — sharp from the nearest to the farthest element, as you can see.

Method 2: Dedicated Software — Helicon Focus 6

Photoshop is versatile, but its algorithms have weaknesses in specific applications — hence specialized tools: PTGui, for example, stitches panoramas far better than Photoshop.

For focus stacking, there's likewise a more powerful option — Helicon Focus, whose optimized algorithms often produce more perfect blends than Photoshop. Here's the workflow.

1. In Lightroom, make basic adjustments, sync them across the set, and export as TIFF.

2. Load all the stacking frames into Helicon Focus 6.

3. Choose render method B: Depth Map, then click Render.

One click generates the stacked image (right, preview) — then save the result file.

Zoom in to inspect the blend: even the fuzz on the flower stems is razor-sharp, and the tiny distant flowers on the ground are sharp too.

Zoomed in, the distant peak and the nearby bud are equally crisp. Helicon Focus's brute-force stacking is excellent — but it's paid software.

Method 3: Manual Mask Blending in Photoshop

For most photos, manual mask blending is convenient and precise, with no paid software needed. The video below demonstrates the exact procedure.

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

And we often shoot outdoors in wind. If the foreground is flowers on slender stems, they WILL sway, no matter how fast you shoot.

When the foreground shifts within a focus series, even the smartest algorithm can't blend it perfectly — that's when you fuse the frames manually with hand-painted masks.