Focus blending? how do I do that then ?

[LittleSkink]

Cant find anything on site about this (did have a good look)

Gather you can combine lots of out of focus images to make one good one (kinda), fancy a go if there is a quick and easy way to do this - be great for macro

any easy to use freeware out there ?

anyone got some wisdom to share on this stuff

(gosh isnt digital image manipulation stuff amazing! soon we wont need to bother taking pictures at all)

cheers

[deejjjaaaa]

Originally Posted by LittleSkink

Cant find anything on site about this (did have a good look)

Gather you can combine lots of out of focus images to make one good one (kinda), fancy a go if there is a quick and easy way to do this - be great for macro

any easy to use freeware out there ?

anyone got some wisdom to share on this stuff

(gosh isnt digital image manipulation stuff amazing! soon we wont need to bother taking pictures at all)

cheers

focus stacking.... google heliconfocus

[IsaacEastgate]

I do this quite a bit with insect macros. I usually take 3 shots. This is a completely manual method which probably isnt the easiest

i layer 2 of the shots on top of eachother. (the one with the biggest area of sharpness on top of the other). Then i put the layer at 50% opacity and erase through the areas where there is more detail on the lower layer. This brings out all the focus area from the second image and brings it into the top one. Then i set it back to 100% and flatten the image. Then i repeat the process using my new image on top of the reamaining exposure.
It takes a long time, especially if you are working with many shots, and obviously if you havent got adobe photoshop this doesnt really help...

I use the same method for HDR, erasing through layers to get the parts i like out of other exposures. It really takes a long time, i guess i should try some of the automate features on the new photoshop...

[Peter Zack]

There is software for something like this TuFuse. But I don't think it's quite what you are looking for. They take in-focus images with similar expossures that are blended. You could also do that in camera with a planned multi exposure shot.

I may be totally wrong but if a shot is out of focus, combining a similar (or many) out of focus shot(s) isn't going to help it.

[Frank Fletcher]

Peter is right - if they are completely out of focus, they are out of focus. But I don't think you meant to say that.

Focus stacking takes several in-focus but limited DOF images and stacks them together, then intelligently selects and combines just the in-focus parts, creating a HDOF image. (Yes, I just made that term up )

Check out:

TuFuse: Exposure and Focus Blending Software
and
Enfuse - PanoTools.org Wiki

Of course there are other commercial products like the previously mentioned:
Helicon Soft: Helicon Focus
and


which is possibly the most interesting of them.

Frank.

[LittleSkink]

ok, thanks for the info

had seen the Tufuse stuff and figured there might be stuff out there that I wasnt finding with google

Isaac - there is a funky tool I use called FDR tools that does lots of the HDR hard work for you, had a play but didnt really get the whole HDR thing, probably as macro is more my bag

[ll_coffee_lP]

That's cool stuff.

c[_]

[falconeye]

Originally Posted by Frank Fletcher

TuFuse: Exposure and Focus Blending Software
and
Enfuse - PanoTools.org Wiki

Of course there are other commercial products like the previously mentioned:
Helicon Soft: Helicon Focus
and

In this post, the "possibly most interesting of them" is made invisible. It reads:
photoacute.com

I second this opinion. Great software. Just for fun, let me add an image stacked from two images shot on Velvia 50 with severe out-of-focus blur, using photoacute.

As you can see, the process isn't fault-free. This image would have needed more than two images.

Note how the tree to the right in the middle ground is soft while foreground and background are sharp

[Frank Fletcher]

Thanks for the fix-up falconeye!