Stacking images

I first heard of this in reference that said it could be done using an image stitcher. Since I never saw the logical connection between hooking up shots into a panorama image and cherry-picking in-focus areas of several photos to create one image.

I'm making a change in the heading and text to reflect your comment here.

Evidently, some freeware/shareware versions of AutoMontage are now available, see here. AutoMontage also now has a stripped down version available.

Anyone who has a need to do this type of stuff often should seriously check out Helicon Focus. Within configurable limits it will automatically resize and balance the exposure of each image to help them match.

Beware that the Photoshop methods described by Professor Hart are really not well-suited to editing photographs. Selecting actual pixels and moving them to new layers to be recombined is a good way to end up with something that looks like a jigsaw puzzle. It'll look good from far away, but get up close and you can see each individual piece. Same goes for the halo touch-up work, where it's recommended to clone pixels from one image or layer directly onto another one.

In both examples it is far better (and totally non-destructive!) to assemble multiple layers and use masks cover or reveal parts of the image from lower layers.

For selecting the sharp parts of an image to use in your mask: create a duplicate layer (Ctrl+J), go to menu Filter|Stylize|Find Edges, desaturate (Shift+Ctrl+U), menu Select|Color, select black with fuzziness 200, delete your duplicate layer, menu Layer|Add Layer Mask|Reveal Selection (or just click the Add layer mask icon in the layers palette). Even THAT is too much work for me, so just do it once and record it as an Action. Now, if you need to hide or reveal a larger sharpness area, just adjust the levels of the mask.

Jay Barnes

I started using the Helicon Focus software this past week, and it has produced some fantastic results on some micro fossil mammal jaws that a colleague of mine is working on, I am going to take some images this week of small cerambycids and post some of the results on here. I think its well worth the 100 or so dollars they are charging.

I've used Helicon focus to create several stitched images of beetles, but waited till I had a beetle larger than pinhead size to make a multi-layer image for show & tell. Following are thumbnails of the images that went into making up the final image of a water beetle from the bed of the Rio Grande in Las Cruces, New Mexico.


And here is the final composite photo. It was not a perfect job due to slight movement of camera on final two images that led to a margin around the beetle that I had to clean up with the clone-stamping tool in PhotoShop. Absolute steadiness of camera and subject are necessary.

I had placed the photos in Frass, and they have expired.

Nice work Jim.

True camera alignment is a real pain but could probably save an hour in Photoshop if done properly. That's only speculation, as I have yet to do it properly. :-)

I did this one with either 4 or 5 stacked frames at 5:1, shot at f/4:


It wasn't enough frames, aperture was too small (softer image), and if you look close you can see some rotation artifacts. Since the widest part of the palp was .27mm I really have zero room for error. It was actually good enough for positive ID on this one, but I have other specimens that aren't as "easy".

Do you know of any good focusing rails that take Arca-Swiss plates and collared lenses? RRS makes a sweet rail, but it requires a gigantic add-on to accept collared lenses.

Jay Barnes

You're way ahead of me Jay. I've thought about focusing rails but have not investigated.

What I've been doing is cranking my camera up and down on my flimsy tripod, and I get some position changes as a result. (I understand this program does make small re-alignments.)

I made a heavy plexiglass closeup shooting table that clamps securely onto the shaft housing of my tripod. It has two undercut-beveled plexi strips glued down with superglue that serve as guides for the actual shooting surface -- a wider strip of beveled plexi with a ruler double-stick-taped onto it, and I line my small-fry insects up along the ruler.

My camera is pointed at right angles to this ruler so I can nudge the shooting surface along and the subjects pass directly under the center of the lens. This has aleady saved me hours of trying to position bugs under the lens.

After a couple carless bumps of the setup that sent insects scattering, I've recently taken to placing the smallfry on a sticky strip cut off a colored PostIt. They stay put better, but at a cost of greater likelihood of antenna and leg loss or other damage due to the glue.

I do not have an ideal illumination setup. I'm using two stacked circline flourescent bulbs that are elevated on small plexi rectangles glued to my plexi shooting table, It might be better to use my ring flash, with maybe a reflecting ring made from a large yogurt container or something. However, my homemade closeup lens would need to be modified so the ring flash could be secured to the end of it. My lens was salvaged from a junked photocopier and taped with packing tape onto a haze filter so it can be threaded into my official Canon 1.5x so-called closeup lens. At some point I suppose I'll invest in a real closeup lens that can accept threaded fittings, adapters, ring flash, etc.

A focusing approach I plan to try today is to run my focus out to infinity, drop my f-stop to wide bore (for greater clarity. I've been shooting everything at f-8.), and crank the tripod down to a sharp image on the shooting surface. Then I'll sequence my shots by backing my focus down from infinity one click each shot. I have an idea that might result in less camera motion. I'll report back.

And thanks for the recommendation. You're right, 100 bucks is nothing if it'll do the job. However, I'm opting for the one-year license at $29.95.

The Fargo system is out of my league for now.

I use the sharpen filters quite a bit myself. And the clone stamp to get rid of any identifiable maculae -- and dirt of course ;-)

I wonder if someone makes a camera that allows bracket photos that vary in focus instead of exposure. And maybe you could select the degree of change between shots -- say 0.5 millimeters variation over 5 or 7 shots. That way a rapid sequence of stitchable images could be made of a live insect if it held perfectly still for an instant.

Seems like a trip to the library and/or bookstore is in order.

Hey Jim,

I use Photoshop quite regularly to compensate for the shallow depth of field in subjects shot at odd angles. (without a tripod, I can't always get a clean shot with the aperture more open, which would solve this).

Photoshop takes some getting used to, so you are gonna have to play around with it. In short, I use one image, with the majority of the subject in focus, as my main image. I then cut and paste parts that are in focus from other shots (In this case, the face of the spider).

I paste this to its own layer and align it on top of the background by bringing the opacity down so it becomes more transparent.

I use the eraser tool to feather out the edges and remove the excess, bring the opacity back up, and repeat if there are other patches I want to add.

It sounds confusing, but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty quick. Here are some other examples where more than one photo was used:

I'll try the cut & paste method in PhotoShop.

I used PhotoShop to merge areas of two photos to make this shot:

When I click on this image and look at the two other shots of your beetle I can clearly see the difference your merge makes.