Capturing pin-sharpness throughout a scene – from the foreground to the distant background – is often the photographer’s aim when shooting landscapes. For wider scenes where the foreground interested is a few metres away from the camera you can usually get away with shooting a single image at f/11 – f/16 on a full-frame camera, or f/8 – f/11 on APS-C. With these settings and correct focusing front to back sharpness is possible in a single shot, but what about when the foreground interest is closer to the camera and you need both this and the background in sharp focus? The simple answer is to use focus stacking to achieve sharper landscape images.
focus stacking
Amateur Photographer magazine cover 26 May 2018
For any photographer, getting your images on the front cover of a magazine is something that never loses its charm. I was delighted to have one of my landscape images taken at Winskill Stones in the Yorkshire Dales, features on the cover of the 26 may 2018 issue of Amateur Photographer magazine. The cover image was used to accompany a technique feature covering focus stacking in landscape photography. See a larger version of the front cover and the focus stacking article below.
How to focus stack images in Photoshop
Focus stacking is the perfect way to ensure your landscape shots are pin-sharp from the front of the image, all the way to the back. Learn how easy it is to blend focus stacked images together using Photoshop’s intelligent automated functions. This tutorial focuses on blending landscape images together in Photoshop, with a small amount of shooting advice.