today I'm going to demonstrate how to use focus stacking in Affinity photo I'm using this to
merge three images into one which will have a greater depth of field I shot the three images
that I'm merging using different Focus points in one image I placed the point to focus on the
foreground in another it was in the middle of the frame and in the other it was on the bridge in the
distance if we zoom into the first image you can see that the foreground is sharp but the bridge
and tree branches the blurred now if we look at the image where I focused on the bridge we can
see that's sharp but the foreground isn't a good tip if your focus stacking images like this is to
name the images using a number to indicate their sequence this will make fixing problems later much
easier as you'll see I've also added the word foreground mid and distance to the name to make
it more obvious where I focused the other thing that I've done is processed the raw files into
TIFF images when you come to do a focus stack or Focus merge in Affinity photo it's possible to use
raw files the only problem is that those software seems to process the individual raw files before
merging them you then don't have access to apply any capture sharpening or lens correction to the
individual images to produce my starting TIFF images I've already applied capture sharpening
and a lens correction to merge these images I'll select file and then new Focus merge from the menu
this displays the focus merge dialogue which is empty I no need to add my process Tiff images for
merging when I click the add button it opens a dialogue where I can navigate to the folder
holding my files if you want to use original raw files for creating the focus stack you can also
open them using this dialogue to add the files you can select them one at a time but it's much
easier if you select them all to do this hold down your command key if you're using a Mac or control
key on a Windows PC then whilst holding it down click the files that you want to select when I've
selected all three of my TIFF images I can click open to add them to the focus merge dialogue at
this point I could add more images if I needed to or remove any images that I've added in error but
as I'm happy with the images I've selected I'll click the okay button to start the merge process
we now see Affinity photo go through the process of automatic Al aligning the images this ensures
the main features and objects in the scene line up after that it selects the main areas of focus
from each of the three images to merge them into a single image when it's done we see the merged
image along with the sources Studio panel if we look at the sources panel we also see the
three TIFF images displayed as thumbnails overall Affinity photo has made a good job of merging the
three images but there are a couple of problems areas that we need to fix if I magnify the image
to 200% and then position the navigator on the bridge you can see the tree branches have moved
this has created a ghosting effect because the software detected areas that were in focus in
two of the images it's therefore used the branches and leaves from both sets of images in the focus
merged image this also highlights the need to use a tripod when shooting the images for the
focus stack because any movement between the images could show up as ghosting also if you're
shooting a nature scene like this there's likely to be something in the frame that moves this
means that you need to inspect the merged image closely to find these areas and repair them now
to the feature that's going to help us make this repair which is in the sources panel this allows
us to compare the individual images with the merged image you can see how this works with
an example if I select the foreground image this is the one where the foreground is in Focus but
not the background after selecting the image I can click the I icon to the bottom of the
source panel we then see the source image rather than the merged image which allows us to compare
the two as you can see the source image is out to focus in this area and hasn't been used in
the focus stacked image our problem with the ghosting must therefore be caused by the other
two images if I click those with the source's previous option turned on you can see how the
branches have moved between the two frames let's say that we decide to use the area from the third
image which has the focus point in the distance to do this turn off the source's preview option
by clicking the I ion again so that we see the merged image then with the image I want to use
selected in the sources panel I can paint over the problem area as I move my mouse pointer over the
area you can see a preview of how there result will look if I apply a brush stroke to apply
the change click and paint over the area using your mouse this tells Affinity photo to use that
area of the source image with the focus merged image which is then updated I can then use the
Navigator panel to move around that area of the image finding problems and fixing them the tool
we're using to do this by the way is the Clone brush and it was automatically selected after
the focus merge watch what happens to the sources panel if I select a different tool the thumbnails
in the sources panel now vanish it's only when I have the Clone brush selected that we see the
images the only difference when we're using the Clone brush to fix the focus merged image is that
you don't need to bother setting a sample point the software does that automatically making it
simple to fix problem areas now let's look at another problem area which is the water in the
foreground for this I'll reduce the zoom to 100% in a navigator panel if you look at the surface of
the water and the light you can see it looks a bit odd this is also being caused by ghosting because
we have the detail from two images being combined in this area as before let's turn on our sources
preview and use it to check the source images if I select the foreground image you can see that it's
soft in this area but if I select the mid focused image it sharp as is the distance focused image
the mistake I made when shooting the three images is that I used too small an aperture this captured
too much depth of field in each image meaning two of them are in focus in the same areas for this
Focus merge I could probably have used only images one and two but I wanted to make this point and
show you how the software Works let's now fix the problem by using only the area from image
2 in the focus stack as before I'll turn off the source preview option then with image 2 selected
in the sources panel I can click and paint over the area as I'm painting you can see the surface
of the water changed to remove The Unwanted detail when I get to the rocks in the foreground I just
need to be careful not to paint over them if you do make a mistake use the undo command in
the menu or press command and Zed on your keyboard if you're using a Windows PC that's control and z
let's zoom out now to see the full image an easy way to do this by the way is double clicking the
merged pixel layer in the layer Studio panel now another technique that involves merging
multiple images is to produce a panorama to see how that's done in Affinity photo watch this video
next thanks for watching today and I hope you've enjoyed the video don't forget to subscribe if you
haven't already and please share this with other Affinity users I'll see you soon for another video