Practical Photoshop

_ Our image editing section offers four all-new tutorials for transforming your shots

hen you shoot close-up macro subjects, the depth of field will be very shallow, and the plane of sharpness your camera can capture may only stretch a few millimetres across the subject, even when you use narrower apertures. It can be a struggle to record a sharp close-up from front to back.

If you need total sharpness, try focus-stacking. This involves taking a series of shots using a tripod-mounted camera, adjusting the focus ring after each frame so that a different part of the scene is in focus. The sharp parts can then be merged into one super-detailed macro photo.

Affinity Photo offers a powerful focus stacking tool called Focus Merge. Not only is it easy to use,

Wit also produces excellent results most of the time. However, no focus-stacking software is perfect: you might see messy blurred areas depending on the intricacy of the image.

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hen you first start shooting portraits, it can be hard to see on the camera’s rear screen the true potential that lies ahead when you post-process your image. Whether you are a purist, a light retoucher or someone who likes to fully enhance the natural details already in a raw, it’s likely that you will apply some touchups in post.

Even the most hands-off photographer will need to add some contrast and tonal adjustments to a flat raw file. If you shoot raw, these files are meant to be retouched: they are flat so that you can bring out their full potential afterwards. Anthropics’ PortraitPro Studio 19 gives you the power to get stuck in and microadjust almost every detail within your portrait.

PortraitPro Studio continues to develop. With its new ClearSkin 5 technology, it can map the

Wcontours and features of a subject’s face and retouch skin accordingly. It also replicates the face’s natural skin texture, allowing you to subtly remove blemishes.

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