Mastering Focus Stacking for Product Photography
Welcome back! If you're a product photographer or even just dabble in it, there's a good chance you've heard about focus stacking. But what exactly is focus stacking, and why should you care? Let's dive in.
Focus stacking is a technique used extensively in product photography to achieve a greater depth of field. Simply put, we want everything in our shot to be in focus from front to back. This isn't always achievable with one photo, so focus stacking comes to the rescue.
What is Focus Stacking?
In focus stacking, you take multiple photos of the same setup, each with different focus points. Later, you compile these images into one, resulting in everything being in sharp focus. This method goes beyond what a wide aperture or a really high f-stop setting can achieve. Often, one shot just isn't enough to get everything sharp and clear.
Why Use Focus Stacking?
Several scenarios call for focus stacking. For one, sometimes the setup or the client requirements are very specific, and you can't change how everything is arranged. In these cases, focus stacking ensures all elements of your product are in focus without compromising the staging or settings.
How I Do It
There are countless ways to achieve focus stacking, and different cameras and editing software offer various methods. What I’ll show you is how I prefer to do it, but feel free to adapt or share your own techniques.
Set Up the Scene:
Products: Gather a few items. For our demo, I grabbed some bottles and a matchbook.
Tripod: For best results, keep your camera stable. While you can freehand it, a tripod makes the job easier.
Focus Points: Arrange your products with focus points in mind. I staggered the bottles and placed the matchbook up front.
Take Multiple Shots:
Use a remote shutter to minimize movement.
Take a photo focused on the foreground element (the matchbook).
Shift your focus to the mid-ground (one of the bottles).
Finally, focus on the background (the other bottle).
Edit and Stack in Software:
Lightroom: Edit each photo with the same settings. This ensures consistency when you stack them.
Photoshop: Import your images as layers.
Select all layers.
Go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers to ensure everything lines up.
Next, select Auto-Blend Layers with the "stack images" option checked. This will blend your layers seamlessly.
Double-check the blended image for any imperfections and correct them if necessary.
Final Adjustments:
Crop the image to remove any edges where data might be missing from the auto align process.
Save your work, and it will appear as a TIFF file in Lightroom for further tweaks as needed and will allow you to export it along with the rest of the photos you might have from that session.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it — a perfectly focused stacked image! By combining multiple photos, we ensure every part of our product is in sharp focus, making the final image extremely detailed and professional.
Focus stacking can elevate your product photography to new levels. While there are different ways to do it, I hope my process can serve as a helpful guide. If you have another method that works better for you, feel free to share it. Happy shooting, and I hope you learned something new today. See you in the next post!
