I recently discovered that Photoshop is capable of focus-stacking, though you have to dig through the menus to find the commands. I thought I’d see how well it works before investing in something like Zerene Stacker or Helicon Focus.
The picture above was assembled from 24 frames at f/5.6, with the camera mounted on a focusing rail. I could have added some more frames to get further depth, but this was enough to show that the process works.
So Photoshop works pretty well when the subject is uncomplicated. How well does it fare with something more intricate, such as Bidens bipinnata?
(Click to see the barbs on the needles.) Not so well. Photoshop has problems with depth perception, it seems. If I’m going to do stacked focus regularly, I probably will have to use a dedicated program.
Internal-focus lens, or does the front element move? I’d expect the latter to cause exactly the sort of problem you’re seeing, requiring much brighter software to compensate.
-j
The front element moves. However, I used a focusing rail to take all the slices for both pictures and didn’t adjust the lens at all between shots.