Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked FinalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

This shot was taken in the Bishops Palace Gardens adjoining Chichester Cathedral. The Gardens are quite extensive but the area I was in is called the walled garden and a part of it called the wild garden having wild flowers. Although Photoshop can align images to be used for focus stacking it helps if the flower does not blow about too much. The walls in this part of the Gardens help a lot in cutting out the wind.

For visitors not in the know the Gardens are tucked away behind buildings. Access can be gained along a passage from the Cathedral Cloisters or along Canon Lane which has an entrance though an archway off South Street.

The camera used was a Sony A550 with a Sigma 28-80 zoom with a macro function at 80mm. Taken on a Tripod.

Taking

The 16 images were taken using manual focusing and small adjustments of the focus ring.

Photoshop

I took RAW and JPEGs but used the JPEGs and copied these to a separate folder.

The next step was in Photoshop to go to file – Automate – Photomerge. In the next window I browsed to the folder for the images. On the defaults I left it on Auto but deselected blend images together and made sure all the options at the bottom of the window were deselected. Click OK and when Photoshop is done all the images will be open as separate layers. Next select all the layers Control plus A or Command plus A on Mac. Next go to Edit and select Auto Blend Layers and from the window select Stack Images. Photoshop then proceeds to select  and stack images using the sharpest part of each image and creating layer masks for each image layer.

If there is more movement it might be necessary to crop a fair bit but there was very little in this case. I did though crop for better composition.

A little extra detail with Topaz Adjust Clarity preset with adjustments to cut down the effect.

Topaz denoise to remove a small amount of noise.

Levels used to brighten a little and a brush on a layer mask used to remove the effect from brighter areas .

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original being one of the 16 images. Then the final focus stacked image.

Original

Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked OriginalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

Final focus stacked Image

Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked FinalWild Flower Buds Focus Stacked Final

For licences see Wild Flower Buds Focus Stacked

Edwin Jones