Corel PaintShop Pro Help | Combining photos with Focus Stacking

Combining photos with Focus Stacking

Focus Stacking lets you combine two or more photos of the same scene taken using different focus distances. You can choose exactly what areas in focus you want to keep from source photos to expand the focal range and customize the depth of field in the output composite image.

How do I take photos that work with Focus Stacking?

Set your camera to manual focus, From a tripod or with a steady rest, shoot a series of photos, adjusting the focal ring to change aperture settings between shots.

To use Focus Stacking

1 Click the Edit tab.

2 Click File

Focus Stacking.

3 In the Step 1: Add Photos and Stack window, click the Add button (plus sign) in the tray.

4 In the Open dialog box, navigate to the photos that you want to stack, and click Open.

5 Click Stack.

A composite of the stack is created in the tray.

6 In the Step 2: Choose Areas of Focus window, click a thumbnail in the tray.

The corresponding photo displays in the preview area.

7 Click Brush in, and in the preview area, drag over the area that you want to preserve.

Repeat for every source image. You don't need to be exact.

Clicking Brush in automatically activates Preview Stacking, which displays the results. You can disable this by unmarking the Preview Stacking check box.

8 Click Blend.

If you want to adjust the stack, click Back.

9 In the Step 3: Crop and Remove Noise window, in the Digital Noise Removal area, do any of the following:

• Type or set a value in the Correction Blend control to determine to what degree the corrected image will be blended in with the original.

The blending values range from 0.0 (no noise reduction) to 100.0 (full processing of the entire image). The default value is 70.

• Type or set a value in the Sharpening control to determine the degree of sharpening, if any, to apply to the image after the noise reduction is applied.

10 Click Finish in PSP.