Stacking is also used in product photography like jewellery or any place where it is essential that the entire subject be sharp and in focus. It is not uncommon to see some photographers use 40-100 stacked images in macro and photomicrography.

The subject depth and magnification determines how many images you need in a stack to get a sharp picture with enhanced depth of field.

The depth of field can be as small as 1-2 microns at magnifications of 400x and higher with a microscope. In macrophotography the depth of field can be less than a millimetre and in microscopy the depth of field is measured in microns (thousands of a millimetre). In macro and photomicrography the closer one is to the subject or the higher the magnification the shallower the depth of field. Stacking can be used in landscape photography by combining a photograph focused on the foreground and one focused on the background to create an incredible depth of field that exceeds what could be done using a very high F-stop (F16-F64), using a tilt-shift lens, or even a large format camera. Stacking is done in software using the digital images. Comparing Photoshop, Helicon Focus and ZereneĪbove is a Focus stack of a diatom where I combined 10 images in Photoshop 400XĪ focus stack is a photograph that is made up of a combination of two or more images that were focused at different points and then after combining the stacks the final image has a much greater depth of field.

Focus stacking software for mac