Practicing Some Focus Stacking Techniques, Part III

OK, based on what I learned and shared about focus stacking in Parts I & II in this series, I’ve created my ultimate end-goal focus stack photograph by incorporating a watch into the photo.  Here it is – just click on the photo to see it full-size:

Like the other two photos in this series, this one was taken with the Canon 5D Mark II.  I also went back to my 100mm f2.8 macro lens, and the photo was again taken in my light box, in RAW file format.  I largely repeated the steps outlined in part II – this image is a combination of six photographs, each one focusing on a little different are of the photo.   The six images were all copied as layers into a single image in Photoshop CS5, and I used the Edit>Auto-Align Layers function followed by Edit>Auto Blend /Stack Images function.  The trick to making this photo work was making sure the first exposure I took with my camera was the image where the watch dial was in focus, with the hour, minute, and second hand in the position I wanted for the final image.  Predictably, when the layers were stacked into a single image, everything but the watch dial looked great!  Since the second hand on the watch dial was moving and varied from shot to shot, the stacked image showed about 5 different second hands.    At this point, I simple selected the watch dial from the first exposure I took, and copied it as a layer into the stacked image version, and carefully aligned it over the “messed up” dial.  All I needed to do then was hit a couple of places with the healing brush to blend it in, and it looked PERFECT!  After final color correction, some tone mapping with PhotoEngine, and a lighting filter applied, I was quite pleased with the end result.

I hope you enjoyed reading these three articles as much as I did putting them together.

1. 

   Tom Barry says:

   March 5, 2011 at 1:37 pm

   Really fascinating technique, John. The result is very fine, indeed.
2. 

   Carlos says:

   November 28, 2011 at 5:41 pm

   The best of the three photos. I really liked your articles!!!!
3. 

   John B. Holbrook, II says:

   November 29, 2011 at 3:26 pm

   Thanks much Carlos! Glad you’re enjoying them!