Handheld Macro Photography Focus Stacking in Photoshop - Tutorial
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Learn how to make a handheld macro focus stack of an insect in the field, and then how to stack the photos in Photoshop.
🔹 This is my favorite macro lens that I took the photos with: bit.ly/mwlaowa60 (I always buy Laowa lenses from this website - best price, good service, and fast, free shipping worldwide)
🔹 I used this flash: • Meike MK-320 - Best Fl...
🔹 I took all photos with my Sony A7III Camera: amzn.to/2xM776q
🔹 I use a Sony Grip extension: amzn.to/2xHKsrR
🔹 This is my camera strap: amzn.to/2XMi4iSMy
🔹 I used a DÖRR on lens diffuser, not sold internationally. You can find similar ones here: amzn.to/3d0pGqH
🔹This video was filmed with this small and wonderful camera: amzn.to/3eKq7bW
🔹Mic used for voiceover: amzn.to/2UBZb1i
🔹I get all my background music from this awesome service: bit.ly/mwepidemic
Thanks for watching! Subscribe for weekly videos! More regular content from me in these places:
💌 newsletter: mwroll.com
🎞 instagram: / mwroll
🪙 patreon: / micaelwidell
🐦 twitter: / micaelwidell
Thanks for watching! Subscribe for weekly videos! More regular content from me in these places:
💌 newsletter: mwroll.com 🎞 instagram: instagram.com/mwroll
🪙 patreon: patreon.com/micaelwidell 🐦 twitter: twitter.com/micaelwidell
📸 the lens I used: bit.ly/mwlaowa60 (best price + free shipping worldwide at that link :)
A tip is to use photoshop for aligning and then exporting the layers to files to stack them in Helicon or Zerene. It definitely works better for deeper stacks.
amazing tips!! I normally spent so much time trying to select the best very few pictures out of the hundreds that I usually take, but with your tips on the automatic stacking on Photoshop it took me 5 minutes to get a very nice result just from 3 pics I had kept as "not interesting"... blended all together they gave an amazing result!! I couldn't imagine it was so easy. Thank you!!
Micael, thank you ! Great approach and it helps for improving the photoshop skills to ! We wait the 2023 insects to wake-up... !
I got my Samyang 100mm a few years ago, haven't used it much for macro photography but I used it for video and portrait photogropht and now thanks to you I've become intereseted again on macro photography! Thanks!!
Great to hear!
A little PS-tip. When aligning, if you switch the upper-layer to difference, it can sometimes aid in aligning. If everything is black, you have done a perfect job.
extremely helpful. thanks so much Micael!
This is going to be my weekend project. I’ve been waiting on this one!
That's what I was looking for! Thank you very much, it has helped me a lot. I've always had a problem with Helicon Focus, as you mentioned, and now use Photoshop for handheld images.
Glad it helped!
You are awesome! Thanks for this exactly what I need
so helpful thank you so much. I honestly love your videos, they have taught me so much. You are amazingly talented and a fantastic teacher as well!!
Thank you for the very kind words ☺️
Thank you so much for the video. I am just getting back into photography after 30 years. I am really interested in macro photography so these videos are incredibly helpful to me.
I truly appreciate your to-the-point approach, which really shined in this video. I thought I was stuck using my focus rail out in the field, which greatly limits my movement, so this video just blew my mind. Thank you!
Great tutorial. Thank you
I just tries this, AND IT WORKS!!! Thanks!!!
Awesome 😃
Thanks a lot for your PS-instructions, it works perfectly!
Nice video Micael :) Just one tip. Zerene and Helicon can do that with ease, even if the images are too far one from each other, in Helicon just go to Preferences -> Automatic Adjustments, and push all adjustments to the max limit, vertical, horizontal, rotation and scale (30%, 30%, 30 degrees and 30%), that should work to avoid those "doubled" stacked results.
I just started trying taking macro shots intending to stack them later and this video popped up. Perfect timing.
Thank you ! My homework for this weekend
Thanks, this was a great video and just what I was looking for to focus stack handheld macro images taken in the field using Photoshop!
Excellent video, straight forward and to the point. Thank you!! I can't wait to try this out.
I often watched some videos about this topic in the past...but you did it really good and the best on point explanation! 👍 Thank's for your really good content! 🙋♂️
Makes me happy to hear that. I was worried if I went too fast
So useful, thank you!
Micael ! Another Great video, many thanks. I knew a diferent process in fotoshop, but your is easier!
Few more tips, 1: in Lightroom instead of copy then paste settings, just select all images and click on sync 2: When aligning images manually, you can use arrow keys to move pixel by pixel for even more accuracy. 3: Alt-Click mask will automatically start with black instead of white.
Thank you !
I was looking for this kind of tutorial since a long time! I am in love with Macro, and I use handheld fuji xt4 all the time with it's 80mm lens. Please can you make more of these kind of tutorials? We never have enough of these kind of tutorials, my best wishes and regards from Uruguay! THANK YOU !!!! BY the way, I managed to achieve a few times the white balance correction, specially for insects that fly and move their wings. I opened them in Camera Raw instead of LR after converting them to tiff (Unfortunately Photoshop doesn't work well with my fuji .raf files) and I adjusted light and color there. Hard, but doable :)
Hi Michael, You have explained how to very well, better than others I have watched. Thank you... one thing I've seen someone else do, lining up photos is using blend mode difference, once lined up change back to normal. hope this helps
Amazing results! Will have to try it myself, thanks for inspiring me Micael!
Mate, great job as always 👍 Thx
Perfect timing. Ive just spent 2 hours trying and failing at this exact thing 😅
Nicely explained. To automate the stacking process even further, I find it helpful to record an action for the Auto-Align and Auto-Blend functions, providing a repeatable one-click playback - but manual blending is a good option if this fails.
Weekend project sorted!
tack för tipset!
Ha en fin vecka!
Very nice video. Focus stacking is quite fun, but it can be very time consuming process. I would like to add to your video, that it is perfectly fine to use auto-align feature in PS even if you plan to do the stack manually. It saves a lot of time. Do you plan to show techniques when doing hand held exteme (2-3:1) macro focustacking?
Actually the photo in this video was taken at 2x magnification - it was a very very small ladybug.
I have a suggestion on your manual process that can make it even more precise. Change the MODE of the second layer from NORMAL to DIFFERENCE - (no need to lower opacity) this will turn everything black and odd colors but then as you move the similar image around the bottom you will see that things which line up perfectly will look better. You can even use your up down side to side arrows to move just one pixel at a time. This allow you a perfect visual representation of pixels. Best wishes, subscribed.
Ah nice! That sounds like a more efficient way of doing it, will try.
Thank you so much 😊
Nice vid
An easy way to do handheld focus stacking is by utilizing the burst mode. You focus the part of the critter that is closest to your camera and then press the shutter and move the camera very slowly towards the rest of the subject. This will solve your alignment problem. I don't know how this will work on high end cameras with huge fps at burst, because the flash may not be able to keep up, but on my Sony A7 with a cheap flash at 1/8 strength, I don't get black frames between shots.
thank you so much, you are the ninya of macro photography tuts. 👍🤘❤
anyone knows is there fast way exporting 'as layers' in PS from C1 21 pro? thanks in advance!
my only idea is export > variants as 16bit tiff, then PS File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack...
Thank you
I've been wondering whether this was possible with handheld! When I first decided to buy a macro lens and I did some research online and came to the (wrong) conclusion that it was only for tripod work, and probably with a special tool to exactly move the camera back and forth in steps.
Thanks so much for the tutorial. I can probably look forward to sharp marco shots with several times more depth of field.
Are there any (decent) free alternatives to lightroom and PS? I am a big fan of open source software.
@Ishan R try with hand held, once you get use to it, and of course depending on your camera you will get amazing results !!! My fuji xt4 gives me lots and lots of satisfactions with the 80mm lens. Now I am trying the Laowa lens as well.
To be fair though - if your shots are aligned eg helicon is nicer to use😄 Awesome tutorial!
I started watching your channel a few weeks ago and Im loving the content. I have to ask you something off topic that I can't get out of my head watching them, are you related to Axel Borg from Örebro who have the "amazingdiyprojects" channel where he shared his drone project? The two of you are looking so alike and your accent is so similar. Hälsningar från en Dalmas living in California...
I don’t know him or his channel but I will check it out :) probably not related
@@MicaelWidell your names are off but you guys are pretty similar. Anyway, thanks again for this fun and interesting channel, I'm watching 1-3 videos from it a day right now. Fun to see some views of homeland Sweden even if it's mostly in micro format.
With focus stack, you lose a few pixels, and even more with handheld stacking, along with the adjustment. Have you tried Super Resolution function in CameraRaw 13.2. I haven't come around of using it yet, but heard that it works better then people thought. Only works with RAW files I have heard, but there were some trick to get a work around for it to work with jpg files as well. Should work better then resize the picture manually. And if you have a camera with a lower MP value, this should be a good option to get a picture that you can print on larger size.
I wouldn’t worry about a few pixels. At these magnifications you probably lose more to diffraction.
Thanks! But also a question!
Is it possible to modify the masks that "auto blend" produces? Because usually PS produces something that is overall good but has some little imperfection somewhere. At least in my experience. And I haven't been able to adjust the masks manually
Yes of course. Just watch a tutorial on how to work with masks.
Have you tried using focus bracketing on your Fuji X-T3? I Understand the X-T4 version allows for more intermediate shots which it calculates automatically based on the front and rear focus points.
DId not try that yet, as I do not have an autofocus macro lens. And all autofocus lenses only go to 1x magnification, so not that interesting to me.
Actually you can set autoadjustment settings in Helicon for auto-aligning you photos (Edit -> Preferences -> Autoadjustments). Just increase the values if your photos are misaligned too much.
Thanks I’ll try that!
Micael - is it possible to manually align layers but then once you have done that get photoshop to try again to auto realign with a closer fit?
Sure, that should work fine. Not sure how much better the end result would be though. You can try!
Do you know how to align phots in helicon?
does anyone know of a diffuser that has the right diameter to be uesd on the LAOWA 65mm lens for mirrorless cameras, as this lens diameter is slimmer.....
I got four images into lightroom and managed to get the exposure and colour the same but my "Edit in photoshop" is light grey and wont work, i'm stuck.😢
looks like you fired the flash. did you do three single shots with flash or one burst?
I never shoot bursts but just single shots. Yes I used flash
@@MicaelWidell thanks, that's what i figured from the video. what aperture do you use typically in that screnario? i think if it's too shallow you have to be pretty precise with three shots so that the focus planes do fit together in post processing and don't leave oof between shots (if that sentence makes sense).
Hi. When i stack the images, a blurry frame apears around the edges of the final image. Why is that happening?
Is it because I use the ring to focus on different place?
It is probably because the size of the frame varied slightly between the shots. This is common. Just crop away the parts that do not look good.
You are using the Godox tt685 flash.
Why not use the godox tt350s flash. It has the same functionality and uses lesser power (only two batteries vs four batteries) and more light weight (200g vs 450g) and supports wireless and ttl.
I really want to know why, because I'm confused which flash will be better for macro..
Thank you in advance 🤗😌
In this video I am actually using the Meike mk320 flash… doesn’t matter what flash you use. 2 or 4 batteries who cares :) use whatever flash you have.
Oh, okay😅. Thank u btw for the clarification.
Very helpful. Thank you!
You're welcome!