So guys, I'm gonna show you something really funny.
I I bought some flowers. I'm here in a beautiful park in Florida,
and I wanna show you how to do amazing,
focus stacking photos of trees. So we have the flowers here as a foreground element.
I have my tripod very low with the 12-24,
which is very wide lens. And I'm gonna take the photo of this
tree with these flowers in a foreground.
And it's gonna be a really cool effect.
So stay until the end because I'm gonna show you how to make it even more dramatic.
I have a special secret of retouching coming at the end of this video.
It's gonna be crazy. Alright.
So I'm at 100 ISO, f/11.
I'm actually gonna boost the ISO a little bit because I don't wanna go under 1/50.
Why? Because there's a bit of wind, and I wanna make sure It's super sharp.
Super sharp. This is a Sony mirrorless camera.
And what I love about it is you can have touch operation on.
Make sure it's on. Usually, it's the bin. If you press the bin,
the touch operation goes off, and if you press it back,
it's on. And when it's on, you can just put your finger over something and make sure it's sharp.
So I'm gonna take a photo. Yeah. There's really wind.
So you want it sharp and then I'm gonna put my finger here
like on the flower that's a little higher
and I'm just gonna take another photo.
And then I'm gonna put my finger on a tree here and I'm gonna take another photo.
And then I'm gonna show you on a different tree.
So now we're on a different tree and same things I position the flowers.
So now I'm like 320 ISO because there's a bit of wind.
I really wanna make sure I am at 1/50. Very important for the speed.
So one for the boom. Then I'm gonna click on a flower that is just a little above.
It's really cool because we have the sun setting right there,
which is amazing. And I go little up and another one on that tree and voila.
Back from this shoot and I've imported the photo into lightroom.
So I basically have four photos but you see they are pretty much dark.
It's hard to tell which one is in focus on what.
The reason they are so dark is I was shooting straight on the sunset
and I really wanted to have the dynamic range so,
I exposed for the highlights. But because the Sony 7rIV is so powerful,
if I open up the shadows, maybe boost the whites a little bit and bring down the highlights,
you know, I'm just doing it like a really basic retouching
and then I'm synching that with, I'm selecting all photos.
I'm gonna synch that correction,
check all. On all the photos, I can really quickly see if I'm sharp at the right place.
Hey, if I'm going a little fast, this is my little's book on Lightroom.
Lightroom Classic, natural drama. You can get this book
for free if you just pay the shipping link is under this video.
So anyway, here I am. And photo number one,
you can see I focused on the flower. This one is a little bit blurry
because there is a minimum distance with the 12-24 and that was too close,
but this one is pretty sharp. This one is pretty sharp.
But you can see the tree is very blurry.
Okay? Then if we go on the second photo,
the second photo, this one is starting to be a little bit blurry
And I'm really focusing on these flowers here.
And then the third photo, the third photo,
the tree starts to be in focus but you see the branch here is still very out of focus.
Okay. And a number four photo.
Now the tree is extremely in focus.
Extremely in focus and the flowers is complete out of focus.
So I'm good. I know I made my shot successful So now I'm gonna do my basic,
basic retouching. So what do we do in retouching?
Well, I wanna do a lot of retouching first in Lightroom,
then go to Photoshop. I wanna make it this dramatic and beautiful.
So first photo, I already, you know, did I'm gonna check my black points.
So for that, I'm just gonna hold on the option key and boom.
Make sure you get about like… so the black point is just pixel which are a hundred percent black.
There's no more detail. So I'm just I usually want about one or two percent that's gonna cool,
and then I'm gonna boost the contrast. Now on this one,
I wanna use a very cool profile like landscape.
So I'm gonna go to profile,
and I'm gonna go to camera matching
because these are Sony files
and I either I'm gonna use the deep profile or the landscape I'm gonna use landscape profile.
You see the landscape profile really makes the color pop,
so I'm gonna close that. Now the photo is a little dark,
so I'm gonna boost the overall exposure.
Like that. And I wanna add maybe a bit of more magenta to the sky.
I brought down the highlights. Let's see.
Maybe we can make the sky a little darker,
so I'm gonna go here. Let's try this.
Select sky. So it's selected just the sky
and let's make it a bit darker and maybe a little bit bluer.
And a little bit more magenta in the sky,
something like that. Don't go over boards. It's gonna look weird just a little bit.
goes a long way. Okay.
That's good. It's the new, you know,
it's the new sky selection. Then I want to make the flower pop a little bit more they're the star of the photo,
so I'm gonna take a brush. And when you take a brush,
make sure flowing density are in the 80s,
the reason is if you put it about a hundred and you add a bit of exposure when you brush,
you're gonna really see the brush stroke. You don't want that.
So command Z to undo it. Let's do it again.
That's why when I use a brush and I do dodge and burn,
I put the flow and density in the seventies or the eighties.
I was born in 1970, a very good year.
Anyways so and then I'm just gonna brush inside of that flower or maybe add a bit of exposure.
And then maybe I had a bit of like.
Let's add a little bit of like texture and clarity on the flower.
Because the whole idea is to have like this very sharp flower,
you know, and don't brush everywhere.
Just in some parts. And again, what we're doing on one photo,
we're gonna put it on all the photos. Okay.
I like that. I think I wanna make the horizon a little more straight.
So let's see if we go down here to remove chromatic aberration and enable profile correction.
Look at the horizon here. And,
boom, it's a little bit better. It's a little bit better.
Not quite there yet, but it's but also it's very blurry in the back.
And you will see as we focus on the back it gets better,
you can always change like the aspect ratio.
But, yeah, on this one, I'm not gonna do it.
Kind of like that, let's add some, like, post crop vignetting a little
bit to focus a little bit inside of the photo.
I want to make the sunset pop a little more,
so I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna add a big radial circle where the sunset is, It was a nice sunset,
so I'm just gonna add some more yellow and some more magenta and some more saturation.
So that it pops out. That's like make like make a big sunset.
That's kind of the star of the photo. Yes.
Now we're talking. Okay. Cool. So,
you know, it's a shame that everything else is blurry,
but now that we've retouched this one,
I think I'm good. I think I kind of like what I did.
On the overall photo, I'm maybe gonna use a little bit of minus clarity.
I think it gives, like, a more, you know,
less HDR look to it, and then I'm gonna select all four photos.
I'm gonna click on synchronize. I'm gonna check all,
make sure that all the mask that I've done here,
all the local adjustment, all the dodge and burn is selected and synchronized.
And wait for it. Now it's gonna take a few seconds because I'm using AI.
For example, the sky has been replaced with AI.
So now all the photos have the same retouching,
which is crazy. You know, and look at that.
And on the back, it's beautiful. Okay.
So now I'm gonna select all the four photos and here comes the magic.
We're gonna make this one photo into one sharp photo.
So right click, edit,
Open as layers in Photoshop. Very important.
Open as layers Photoshop. The reason why you want this is
because you want to have one Photoshop file and all the layers inside of the Photoshop file.
So here I am in Photoshop and all I have is the layer panel open,
you can go to windows and make sure that the layer is open.
We don't really need anything else but layers.
So I got the layer open. I've got my photo here.
So the first thing we need to do is you hold on a shift key and you select all the layers.
Okay? Once you have all the layers, you go to edit,
and you go to auto align layers.
Because, you know, and click on, okay, just use the default settings and you know,
oh, okay. The reason is, you know, when I was touching the screen as you saw on the camera,
maybe I slightly moved the photo And if I did,
it won't be able to blend the focus perfectly.
So you first always always even if you shot on a tripod,
you align the layers. Okay.
Now everything is aligned and you just it's still selected here,
so you just go to edit and now you go to the magic.
Blend layers. Same thing. You just use a default option,
and that's gonna make one photo to roll them all.
And boom. Look at that. Look at all these masking that's been automatically in.
Let's inspect our photo. So let's I'm gonna click on any of the layers.
I'm gonna take the zoom tool, z for Zoom tool so let’s inspect.
So this one we know was a little bit blurry from the start,
but look at it. It's sharp here. It's sharp here. It's sharp everywhere.
And this is kind of phenomenal. That kind of photography
you when you have that because people are not used to see that.
So now I'm ready to just go to file.
Close all and then I'm gonna save it and that's gonna bring it back to my Lightroom.
Boom, It's back here. Look at this photo. It's incredible.
Everything is sharp from the start to the end.
I love it. I'm gonna do a double dodge and burn because I wanna sort of darken some parts.
I'm gonna lower the exposure, make sure flow and density.
I use the middle mouse to make my mouse go bigger,
and I want to darken this a little bit.
I wanna focus the eyes not so much here.
So, you know, there's a trick in photography. It's called Dodge and Burn.
You darken what you don't want people to look at and you brighten what you want people to look at.
So I want people to look at the flower and the sunset,
and that's why I'm making everything else dark.
And voila. So I do have to re-crop a little bit the photos slightly
because the alignment did something weird to it a little bit.
But, you know, maybe let me try if I can make this one 16x9.
I'm not sure it's gonna work. Oh, maybe it is? No,
It's cutting too much of the tree. So I'm just gonna do classic full by three,
and then let's make it big. Yeah. I wanna get the whole yeah.
I wanna get the whole thing here. A little bit on the side.
Yeah. I just there's a bit of a white line here and voila.
And, voila, look at that. Everything is kind of sharp.
Almost everything except this was too close to the lens.
But from here, all the way to infinity, everything is sharp.
It's beautiful. Try it, you know, it was so funny bringing in the flowers.
Like, it's kind of like, I faked it with the flower,
but, you know, it's kind of making a photo instead of taking photo.
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If this is a five step way to use Lightroom.
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