Thanks for your comments Eric. I will email you a more detailed response but the short answer is No, I don't do anything fancy like that. This picture was shot with an Olympus C4000 (4 megapixels) using a 2X macro lens from Raynox and everything else is done on an old Macintosh. I find that if I keep the aperture small and use plenty of light, depth of field isn't a problem. I also have a 4X lens from Raynox that works well for specimens down to 1/2 an inch. I don't really know anything about cameras or photography but I have gotten some good advice on this subject from Gayle Strickland who is another bugguide contributor. Unfortunately for anything smaller than 1/2 - 1/4 of an inch you need a more powerful lens and with these lenses the depth of field problem becomes so severe that these automontage programs become necessary for the best images. You can try to keep the aperture small and use a very strong light source which still gives an adequate depth a field but the specimens don't look very sharp. For now, I don't digitally manipulate the actual beetles at all but I do play around with the background to remove labels and shadows and to set a uniform background color.