CS3 stacking or ?

[r.morales]

I have CS 3 and was wondering if anyone knows of a tutorial on stacking or another program with a manual on stacking ?
I found one on pano's that's fairly easy . Will post next , I had it but lost in copy and paste .

[r.morales]

Scrol down and have sound turned up .
http://www.oman3d.com/tutorials/photoshop/learnphotoshop_panorama/

[noodle_snacks]

Assuming you mean focus stacking (since this is the macro forum). I'd take a look at combine ZM

[r.morales]

Yes I mean focus stacking . I'll do a search for focus stacking .
unfortunately it's a windows program and I am on a Mac .
Thanks .

[racketman]

Helicon do a programme for Mac which I have subscribed to.

[Lester Wareham]

I used to use CombineZ but now I just use layers in CS2 as I find this gives less artifacts and is actually quicker.

Like a lot of Photoshop work it takes longer to explain than to do!

1. Get your frames in one file as layers (optionally you can apply some rotation if necessary before cut and pasting in).

2. Align the appropriate areas between pairwise layers, switch the top layer's blend mode to difference to aid this (keep the other layers turned off, just do two at a time).

3. One you have done that put all the blend modes back to Normal and click the layer mask icon to add a mask for each layer.

4. Next you need to paint the layer mask to hid or reveal different areas, work from the bottom of the stack up. There are two methods, fill the layer mask with white and paint black (hide), alternatively fill with black and paint with white (reveal). Mix and match the methods as needed. Use a round soft edge brush with 100% opacity and 100% flow. Don't sweat it, get it wrong just backup the history a few steps and start again.

<<< The rest of this fairly much as needed for an unstacked shot >>>

5. Go through the layers and spot dust bunnies if needed using the clone stamp.

6. Add any local luminance changes using a adjustment layer(s) as needed.

7. Add overall level adjustment layer to set the white and black points and contrast in needed.

8. Add luminance noise reduction layer as needed. I have an action that does this adding a Gaussian blur layer with a mask based on a surface mask action I borrowed from somewhere else. I normally paint the mask to maximise sharpness where the detail is.

9. Add any custom sharpening layers if needed.

10. Save (important one this).

You now have a non-destructively edited secondary master you can rework at any time if you want.

[r.morales]

Thank you , I just bookmarked this under HDR .
Is this cutting out the bad areas and pasting in the good ? Or is it already there in stack ?
IE - focus on front of spider , next , back of spider , then web . Make out of focus clear and layer what's in focus ?
I have cut and pasted people into a group shot - there it took a lot of work get the paste size to match the other .

[Lester Wareham]

Well it is just a standard compositing technique you could use for lots of things.

Below shows a focus stack layer setup which might give you an idea. This shows 3 frames stacked together background, 002 and 008.

002 and 008 have layer masks to control what part of the image comes from them.

Then there are brightness/contrast and levels adjustment layers and the top layer is a sharpening layer.

The technique once you have the layer masks in place is to click the mask, that way you see the composite image but your brush paints the mask.

As you paint white that layers image is magically revealed. If you paint black, that layers image disappears and you see whatever is on the layer underneath.

It is very easy and natural to do. Like a lot of things the best way to learn is to have a go. Once you have done it once you will know it for ever.

Might be best to follow this up in the post processing forum if it is not macro related.