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This photo of the Kowa E camera I reviewed recently is my first attempt at focus stacking with Photoshop.
The process is very simple if you have the app. There are just two steps:
1) Edit > Auto-Align Layers
2) Edit > Auto-Blend Layers
Focus stacking is a technique of combining multiple images of the same thing taken at various focus settings. This is useful for photos of objects taken up close with large apertures as those factors combined create a very narrow depth of field (more about it here: analog.cafe/r/what-is-aper…).
In my case, I had two photos, one had the lens in focus (with the camera body blurry), and another was focused on the body. Neither looked good on their own.
Surprisingly, the focus stacking technique worked well, despite the difference in geometric distortions and perspective, as the photos I had were taken on a half-frame SLR (analog.cafe/r/my-olympus-p…), hand-held. The only thing the app struggled with was blending the blurry background, which I ended up blending in from one of the original photos manually.
Notice the tip of the pentaprism bump — the dark artifact behind it is the result of Photoshop not coping well with the samples I gave it.
Here’s a step-by-step of how I got to the image that I felt was good enough to headline the review:
1) First photo, where the lens is in focus (you can see the serial number clearly), but the body is out of focus due to the narrow depth of field.
2) Second photo I took of this camera with the body in focus (notice the light meter bubbly texture above the lens — it’s in focus, whereas the lens is out of focus/writing is blurry).
3) Focus stacking done via Photoshop (Auto-Align Layers + Auto-Blend Layers).
4) Colour correction via Color Balance adjustment layer. Here I also blended in the blurry background from image #2 as the auto focus-stacking had seriously screwed it up.
5) Removed dust and scratches (using techniques in this guide — analog.cafe/r/how-to-remov…).
FWIW, I think of the result as a predominantly analogue photograph, though it is certainly a composite that was blended digitally.
If you’re interested in the camera itself, you can read more about it here: analog.cafe/r/kowa-e-revie….
