Practice Focus Stacking 2.11.11 by Pat McKee

This is one of my first attempts at macro photography using focus stacking. The focus stacking software used here is Helicon Focus. It is a very time consuming process of both taking multiple shots of each panel at various focusing depths and in the editing process. Obviously, I'm not very good at it yet, but I can see the real potential. I did not have very even lighting in this picture and I have spots where I didn't take enough images at enough focusing depths. The program wants me to take shots in sequence of focusing depths, which I found very hard to do and obviously didn't accomplish, however I will keep trying. This image is another first for me, in that instead of putting all my images into the stiching software and uploading directly to the Gigapan site, I saved the stich as a TIFF, brought it into Photoshop where cropping and a litlle editing took place, and then uploaded it to the site using the Gigapan "Upload" software. I will post the original next.