AFFINITY FOCUS STACKING TIPS

Get impressive back to front focus using Affinity Photo’s focus merge

01 SELECT YOUR IMAGE SET

To Focus Merge, just open Affinity then go to File>new Focus Merge. Click Add in the dialog box and navigate to your set of focus-stacked photos. Cmd/ctrl-click on the files you want to select, then hit Open to bring them into the New Merge.

02 START THE MERGE

Once you’ve chosen your images, hit Merge – this’ll take a while. First the images are aligned to correct for changes in subject size between each shift. Next a depth map is created to find the sharp parts in each frame, The sharp parts are merged together into one.

03 CHECK FOR ISSUES

Once the merge is complete you’ll see the Sources panel appear. You can use this to fix any blurry areas if the merge has been unsuccessful. Zoom in close to check for problems. In this case some of the details in the plant aren’t as sharp as they could be.

04 FIND SHARPER DETAILS

Click the Source Preview icon at the bottom left of the Sources panel to toggle it on. The view changes to allow you to click on each image that makes up the merge. Click through to determine if a sharper area exists than the one on the merged image.

05 CLONE THE EDGES

Pick the photo in the Sources panel that contains the sharper area, then click the Source Preview icon again to return to the merged view. Grab the Clone tool and set Opacity to 100 and paint over the blurry area to fix it by cloning from other shots in the Sources panel.

06 SHARPEN THE DETAILS

Go to the Layers panel (View>studio>layers), then hit Cmd/ctrl+j to duplicate the bottom layer. Go to Filter>sharpen>high Pass. Set the Radius to about 2.5px, then go to the Layers panel and set the blend mode to Overlay. Make other changes to finish off.