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7. The Menus / 7.7 The Filter Menu

### 7.7.37 Digital Camera/Focus Stacking

Focus stacking is about increasing the sharpness of a subject that you want to photograph. Especially in macro photography, the problem arises that often only parts of a subject can be focused.

This is where Focus Stacking comes in. You take several pictures of the subject, shifting the focus point in each photo. Focus Stacking then calculates a sharper overall image from these images.

With Add Image(s) you can add the images you want to combine to the image list. Usually, however, it is easier if you select the necessary images in the Browse panel (chapter 5.4) and call the Focus Stacking via the context menu of Browse. Then the selected images are automatically taken over.

You can create two types of result:

- Create Layers with Masks
Here a layer mask is created for each image and the result is the sum of the partial images. This has the advantage that you can edit the layer masks to improve the result.
- Create Sum Layer
With Create Sum Layer the result is a single image. It usually gives a better result than creating layers with masks. However, if anything in the overall image has been merged incorrectly, the result is more difficult to post-process.

If you have taken your pictures without a tripod, you can align them with Align. However, this only works to a certain extent. Basically, it is better to take the individual images with a tripod.

The remaining settings control how the result is calculated.

- Mask Blur has a meaning only when layer masks are created. It determines how much the individual submasks blend into each other.
- The actual calculation of the result is done by frequency separation. For this purpose, the individual images are divided into frequency bands, and the information of the image that has the highest contrast in the respective band is then used in the overall result. Steps defines the number of frequency bands.
- Filter Radius per Step controls the width of the frequency bands.

Tip: Calculating a focus stack can take some time. If you want to carry out tests with different settings and especially if you have also activated Align, it makes sense to first work in the Create Sum Layer mode. This way you get a document that contains the aligned single images and at the top the sum image. If you now want to try out Focus Stacking with other values, you only have to delete the sum image and call the function again. Since the individual images are already aligned, you do not have to do this again for the subsequent calls.