How I Focus Stack MANUALLY for Incredibly SHARP Landscape Photos
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In this week’s episode, we discuss how I focus stack manually for incredibly sharp landscape photos. In my video last month all about Auto Focus Stacking I received many questions in regards to Manual Focus Stacking and what you should in the event that things are moving throughout your scene. This is a very common situation especially in landscape photography where it’s not unusual to have things like clouds, leaves, or water moving throughout your composition. In situations such as this Photoshop often has issues accurately determining which areas of an image to use and which areas that shouldn’t be used.
In this video, I review how I manual focus stack my landscape photos when Photoshop requires a bit of extra assistance. If you’re not familiar with what focus stacking is, it’s the process of taking a series of images that are each focused at different areas of your composition. Then during your post processing workflow you blend the images together only using the areas of greatest focus thus creating a final photo that's perfectly sharp throughout the entire image. Now I understand that blending photos can be a bit intimidating, but once you try this technique out a couple times I think you'll be surprised just how easy this actually is.
So the next time you encounter a composition that requires focus stacking and also has things moving throughout your scene, I hope the information in this video helps you feel more comfortable attempting to manual focus stack your landscape photo.
If you enjoyed this video, please consider giving it a thumbs up and let me know what you think in the comments below - I guarantee I'll get back to ya.
Thanks for watching everyone!
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Which do you prefer? Manual or Auto Focus Stacking
I typically do an automatic focus stack then look at the results. If I'm not happy, then go to manual mode! Thanks Mark - your work is outstanding!
Typically auto because I find it normally works, but then I do touch ups on the masks if I spot any errors.
@@markgoeman8139 Much appreciated Mark - thank you! That’s typically what I do as well.
@@Eli-lb1lc Yep, that’s what I do as well!
@@Eli-lb1lc Me too...
I've watched so many videos on editing manual photo stacked images but fair play to Mark this is the best of them,this one is a keeper so SAVE it people if you need to learn how to do this.
Thanks o much Bob - music to my ears!
Of all the content creators I watch, your videos are always the ones I get the most value out of. No fluff and well put together. Thanks for the content!
Joseph Lee This is amazing to hear Joseph! I really appreciate you talking the time to let me know!
Again.... Great video. Thank for all your help. Love your work. 👌👍👍
Thanks so much Carlos!
Your videos are full of useful informations for me. Thank you.
Thank ya friend!
Thank you so much for the content you provide to your viewers.
deft Glad to do it!
Hi Mark. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your clarity of instruction! Thanks. I usually do a manual focus, just like you taught me in another video of yours. Take care.
Really appreciate this Mary - thanks so much!
Another awesome tutorial Mark. Thank you sir!
Great tutorial Mark, thank you for all your help
Really clear instructions…bravo!!!!
Mark you ARE the man when it comes to teaching. One thing I've always liked about your videos is that you never say "This is THE way to do it" You always say "This is MY way I do it" You also guide & explain EVERY step perfectly in how we can learn your techniques in creating better images from our photos. As ALWAYS I pressed the thumbs up before watching and was NOT disappointed 👌🏻 Thank you for your time and effort you put into your videos 😃
Shane Smith Photography Thanks so much to you Shane! This comment means a lot - much appreciated🙏
I gotta do that edit sync more often. Often I’ll come back from a big shoot and start editing individually and I can never get them quite the same despite being shot in the same conditions. I learn something new from you every day.
Jared Weaver Thanks Jared! Glad to hear it!!
Hi Mark, I really enjoy your educational videos. I've been an amateur photographer for several years but I learn something new from every one of your tutorials. I do have a suggestion though...you may want to put a new battery in your clock on the wall. Every video is frozen in time at 7:50. Just an observation.
thank you Mark for your great video, great content for learning with good quality video. keep it up.
Mark I’m so glad I found your channel. Your vids would have to be the most relaxed and easy to follow I’ve found. Thank you so much, my editing has become so much easier and faster. Love your work mate.
Very clear and succinct tutorial. Much appreciated. :-D
Tom Wagner Thank ya Tom!
Thank you, Mark for a very thorough focus stacking video. My photo buddies and I have monthly photography “tasks” that we work on and Focus Stacking was for March. We are behind in our goals, so your vlogs came at a good time. I enjoy your step-by-step teaching style and you make it look so easy. Thanks again and we look forward to the next one!
Excellent tutorial on post processing!!
Would love to have some tutorial videos on "Focusing in Live view Mode"!!😊👍
Great video, easy to understand thank you!
Thanks for the thorough explanation Mark, this technique saved an image of mine that PS could not auto stack properly.
Thanks for this video!!
Happy to do it!
Nice shirt. I knew it was only matter of time before my hometown would show up in one of your videos.
VERY well done. Thanks.....
John Michnowicz Much appreciated John!
Very good tutorial 👌🏾
Thanks Armando👍
Thanks Mark
Thanks for watching Lawrence!
Thanks for the clear and helpful tutorial.
Happy to do it Paul!
Your tutorials are very thorough, so much detail on each and every step. Great to learn from 👍🏻
Excellent tutorial
Great video! Thank you Very much 🙏
THanks so much!
Thank you for this video! I was able to do the same in PS Elements.
Great video. thank you.
Thanks Sam!
Thank you Mark! Your clear explanation makes this seem less scary now - LOL. Love your videos man, keep it up!
This is great to hear Paul - thank ya man!
Perfect! Just what I was looking for. Thanks so much!
Great instruction
Thanks for showing that Mark. Much as I have done it but with a few shortcuts. I have had issues with the auto on some images, particularly one seascape. I guess the moving waves confuse PS. I will be revisiting that seascape before submitting it to a competition, not that I am competitive, just nice to get some peer validation. Stay safe and stay healthy!
Fun. So elegant.
Thank yoU!
Your technique for manual focus stacking is unique, but why do you use masks in this process? I to do manual focus stacking for some of my landscapes. I shoot with a Nikon D850 most of the time even on my closeup work and use the automated system built in the camera. Some of my closeup work using the automated system I will shoot up to 75 shots. I tried using Photoshop to stack them and locked Photoshop up! Photoshop also added artifacts to my images and wasn't easy to fix. I then purchased Helicon Focus Pro, and it stacked any set of images even the 75 images I have with no errors or problems. If you do get some movement in yoy scene its so easy to correct the final image.
I am just starting out with luminosity masks and stacking and it's obvious that initially there is a lot to take in. I have to say though, having watched a number of videos already, that this one is by far the best both in terms of explanation and illustration. Too many of these videos make the mistake of 'assumed knowledge' on part of the viewer and fail to break down the steps slowly and with sufficient clarity. Keep up the good work.
Great video. I think I prefer this method over the auto method you showed in your last video. On another note, the ThinkTank memory car holder on your desk. Do you prefer that over the hard case design from other manufacturers? I use the ThinkTank and never saw the need for the bulkier ones. Just wonder what you regularily use. Take care and stay safe. These are some crazy times.
Thank ya Mickey! Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I usually use my hard shell case for my SD cards as it offers much more protection over the soft shell design.
Great, that’s Mark
Awesome video 🤓
Hello mark, your youtube page is where i sleep currently, i have watched a lot of your videos and i must say you are really giving out great tips. good job sir. but i have not seen you save an image after edit, whats your saving process after the edit?
Why not start with the background layer on the bottom and paint in the foreground on top of that, that seems a lot more natural than painting in the background on top of the foreground?
I’ve been using focus stacking for macro for some time, processing dozens of focus steps in Zerene Stacker, but focus stacking for landscapes involves far fewer focus steps and a different approach. Binge watching tutorials on the subject and practicing, your video stands out for covering little details glossed over by others, such as brush settings, hot key shortcuts, etc. I’ve added these details to my crib notes. Big picture, I group the layers, then duplicate the group, then apply auto blend to the duplicate. If auto blend fails, then delete the duplicate, make a new duplicate and apply the manual method. A backup of the original aligned layer set is always readily available if a do over is necessary.
Mind=BLOWN!
Great video Mark! I have a quick question (probably a stupid one!). Once you flatten the images or combine them in some way, does the final image still have the same latitude for editing that a raw file provides or is the final image same as a jpeg image?
Aniruddha Neogi Thanks so much! I always save it as a TIFF file - it still has quite a bit of latitude from an editing perspective albeit not quite as much as a RAW file.
Mark Denney thanks!!
Great video, I love your explanations. Is this what you do to get a sharp image of a waterfall where the breeze from the falls is causing tree limbs to shake? Trying to get a long exposure of waterfall without blurry branches.
Thanks Jamie! Yes, I would take a photo for the waterfall with a slower exposure than take another image for the leaves with a faster exposure then blend the two together👍
usefull video
Thank you, thank you Mark! Even as a PS novice I think I can handle this. Is it safe to assume that the process is fundamentally the same when stacking exposure brackets?
Glad you enjoyed it James! Yes, the basic premise is the same👍
Hello Mark thank you for all your videos I just love them. If I may I've got a question for you: when you want to manual focus stack (I mean not using the focus stacking function in the the X-T3) how can you get control of the exposition? Very often when I focus on the foreground the exposition change when I focus to another part of the image ...Would you be kind enough to explain how you solve this problem? Thanks in advance
Mark I have a question, is it possible, when you finished a focus stacking, to post process the image in Lightroom? I am not yet familiar with post processing in Photoshop? I appreciate your answer!
I've already found it!! While saving it stood there!
...very well explained!! Thanks so much...greetings!!
Thanks so much Andreas!
When taking the photos for stacking what mode do you use? So that exposure is the same in case the light changes or it doesn’t matter as you can edit after?
Manual focus stacking should really only be about correcting tiny mistakes done by the auto focus stacking step. In terms of Lightroom adjustments many of the adjustments should only be applied to the stacked photo - all local adjustments (including vignette effects), and other global adjustments like sharpening, texture, contrast, dehaze, etc - things that will affect the sharpness or contrast of the photo. It's OK to set the white balance, to change the global exposure, but you don't want to do drastic changes to the photos, otherwise you might introduce changes that will cause problems in the focus alignment or stacking algorithm. Example - if you have lenses with significant focus breathing and you add a vignette to the photos, then you align them: you will end up with uneven lighting on the aligned photos as the vignette areas have been moved and they are no longer uniform in each layer. Save the stacked photo in Photoshop, go back to Lightroom, and apply those changes on that stacked photo.
Clear, concise and to the point. Well done.
Thank ya Vincent!
REALLY helpful video! I have recently started working with focus stacking, but have let PS do all the heavy lifting. Your clear demo and instructions make it easy to manually setup the layers when I will need to.
Do you use automatic focus stacking, then go to manual if you don't like the results? Or do you have a different workflow?
No fluff. Straight to the point. Love it!
Excellent video. I have always used auto stacking, but now I think I will give this ago. Never really knew how to use the layer mask properly until now. Thanks mark, you're one of the most helpful people out there and you explain it so easily. Keep up the amazing work
Just wanted to ask, would you recommend lenses made by canon or 3rd party seller?
Thanks so much - I really appreciate that! Canon definitely makes amazing lenses!
"you're one of the most helpful people out there and you explain it so easily" I totally agree.
Great! Light bulb moment for me. You make it look so easy. Thanks Mark
Thanks Johan!
This is the only thing that bugs me about editing on the iPad. Adobe really needs to open the possibility of doing this workflow and exposure blending on there.
Hey, what an incredible video. Keep up the superb work! I look forward to your next video.
WOW Mark, you're approaching the 100.000 subscribers pretty quickly! Keep up with your great work!
Margarita N It’s so very exciting - Can’t believe it’s even reality!
Does focus stacking differ between crop censer to full frame cameras?
by far the best explanation of manual fs thanks
Hey Mark, this video mandatorily needs a big thumbs Up! 👏👏👏
Thanks so much - really appreciate that!
Just downloaded Photoshop with no clue to what I am doing. I have 4 RAW images I want to Focus Stack. Since I am using iMac computer these images are first opened in Camera Raw 12.4. Able to adjust any of these images from Camera Raw but don’t know how to open these images in individual Layers straight to Photoshop. It always opens in Background layer, maybe I opened the wrong way?
Is it possible to focus stack as well as exposure bracketing in the same group of shots? If so do you have any pointers? Thank you for all of your inspirational stoke Mark!
You sure can. I usually will exposure blend first and then focus stack the images afterwards. Appreciate ya checking out the video👍
As always thanks for a great video.
Thanks for checking out the video Michael!
I'm just curious, why use mask? Couldn't you use the eraser tool to simply erase the out of focus areas in each layer? It seems to me you would get the same result without having to use masking and require less steps which is more productive. I'm not well versed in photoshop but I don't see why I would take a more complicated route, someone please let me know what I'm missing, because I thought that masking had an advantage with separating fine details like branches in the foreground from a sky from the background.
Just watched your original video on auto focus stacking. Tried to send a message, but somehow, got bumped to another video (not yours), so I’m replying here. Very helpful information. I just did my first focus stack. One challenge I encountered is that, when exporting the files to Ps, they did not automatically convert to layers! (Yes, I chose the option for converting to layers.) So I had to manually convert them to layers. Then everything worked like a charm! Thank you for your videos, they are such a help. (Also appreciated the shout outs to Oregon! My home state!)
Thanks for the great information and workflow tutorial. Also, thank you for a succinct presentation👍
Mark, Great instructional video. I am just now adding landscape photography to my portfolio (have been doing wildlife photos). This will greatly help me. Thank you.
Hi Mark,
Another great video. I notice you have a Lumenzia panel in Photoshop. How about a beginners guide to Luminosity masking? Something i've struggled with from Lumenzia through to creating my own in Photoshop. I'm not sure whether its the process or the 'Why' behind it that I struggle with. Thanks.
Did you mention what software you were using? I missed that.
Are you planning any work shops for later this year?
Drew Robertson Thanks for asking Drew! I’m teaching at the Out of Acadia and Out of Moab Landscape Photography Conferences in Sept and Oct this year - super excited for them both!
Great job Mark! Too often this is taught with the annoying habit of placing the cursor or clicking an option without explaining what's been done, Expecting the watchers eye to have seen what was done.
howlinhog Thank ya much! Great to hear the video was helpful!
Mark...
With my (old) Nikon D7500, I've done manual photo stacking for landscapes and macro with pretty decent results.
I just switched to a Nikon Z5 and got my first introduction to the "in body" focus shift shooting menu.
Now purists (and I won't necessarily disagree) will say you're much better of doing things "by hand", where you, the shooter, maintain overall control as opposed to leaning on the camera's technology to do the same thing.
There's not much in the way of "how to use it" and "recommended settings" info out there, so wanted to seek the Master Mark opinion on focus shift shooting. Is it simply a gimmick or can one achieve good results with it? Do the images that are taken "in camera" get stitched together to a final photo in the camera, or do they still need to be exported to a photo editor like you would with a manual photo stack series?
Cheers!
Mark, Again you have created a video that I will be watching over and over, and ...... You're the best. Thanks for being so thorough. P.S. My choice on focus depends if my subject is small or large. More apt to go auto if it's landscape, but will use different focus points. Flowers I go strictly with Manuel focus. Hope that helps. Bill.
Pourquoi ne pas avoir utilisé 'hyperfocale? Avec un objectif de 25mm ouvert à f8 , l'avant-plan net est très près et ensuite faire un petit recadrage?Bonne journée et merci pour vos super vidéos
Well done Mark .. very well done. I watched another video that showed this process and I really wanted to do this. Unfortunately, that host bounced around so fast without detailing the Photoshop tools that even after watching it 5x, you still could not grasp what procedure he was doing.
This was VERY informative as I would much rather prefer manual focus stacking over automatic.
Thank you! ..
Great content and a wonderful explanation. Thank you, Mark.
Thanks Rasesh!
Mark, brilliant video, as usual. You are such an inspiration to follow.
Quick question regarding changing the focus, you are doing this on the camera itself, thereby risking movement of the camera. Is there a reason why you don't use your smartphone to manipulate the focus point and take the shot? Feature not supported? Easier to do manually?
Compliments. Great video/vlog. Clear and calm explanation. 👍👍👍
Thanks for the video, Mark. Always enjoy them. I have a few questions about the manual stacking. I don't understand a couple things. First, why did you change the order of the stacking to reverse, what you started with? I don't see how that can make any difference to Photoshop. Secondly, you painted out the parts that are less sharp in the back and mid-level but did not do the same to the front layer; before you flattened them. Why would you not paint the mid and back out of the front layer if it effected the other two? Thanks in Advance!
Thank you very much Mark, this video was very informative and helpful!! 😊
I tried focus stacking and it was bleeding all manually. Many time I could not see a difference. This vid WILL help. Also working with a really blow up image to a point is of value. Also being more strict in my shooting process
Great stuff, very well explained. Thank you!
R Garlin Much appreciated - thank you!
good job bud.. your channel is turning in to some prime time content
Harry A Much appreciated Harry - thank ya!
Excellent as always. Much appreciated
Many thanks!
Thanks for this video, Mark! Can this same process be used for exposure blending?
Great video! Thanks so much!
Thank you!
Another great tutorial; thank you! As someone who isn't very familiar with PS though, why didn't you have to mask the foreground layer?
Is there a photography nowadays? I see everywhere that without Photoshop it is impossible to be recognizable as photographer. In case of Your video everything is very good. Thanks a lot.
super stuff...thanks from ireland
Thanks Robbie!
I took a batch of photos, using all 9 focus points on my camera, last fall and finally got around to processing the photos last month. I couldn't really tell which photo used which focus point. I should've taken notes when I shot it. 🙄
Yeah it can be difficult sometimes to tell which is which.
I usually take a shot with my finger pointing down to show me where the stack starts, then move focus points from near to far taking the shots. I then finish with another shot with my finger pointing again
@@davidaldridge3669 I had thought about doing something like that, but thought "Nah! I'll remember!" 🤣
I guess it depends on camera model, but on the Canon 7D you can display the focus point on the LCD when reviewing the photo, not sure if this can also be displayed in Lightroom...
I don’t appear to have the ‘Edit in’ function available in Lightroom when I right click on a photo. Any help to resolve this is appreciated.
Mark - can you realistically focus stack hand held. My son and I are going on trip and I just don't want to carry by tripod. Any tips on how you can maybe do this. Thanks Mark
Hi mark great video. Quick question - if you were to use the auto blend option, I take it you can still apply the touch up amendments shown in this video where there are slight blurry parts of your image?
Another great video, many thanks.
Thanks Robert!
Hi, great video ! Could you also present a framework where you first use autoblend from PS and then to micro ajustements from there ?
Great video Mark, really looking forward to trying this! I’m always challenged with Focus Stacking water scenes, so I’m hoping this will solve it for me. Keep up the great work.