I have used PhotoAcute Studio for jobs involving focus stacking, or extended DOF (depth of field). It did a better job for me than other programs out there, even though it wasn’t perfect. I still have to be prepared to do plenty of hand-masking. Like all programs, including PS, it can’t read your mind. So I was very interested to hear that Photoshop CS4 now included the ability to stack images with different DOF. So I availed myself of the 30-day demo and took it for a spin.

My first test is a side-by side comparison of a focus stack using 4 exposures. I’ll be doing a tutorial on using PhotoAcute before long, but here’s the process in Photoshop CS4:

1. Select your series of developed images (in my case, they’re tiffs) in Adobe Bridge CS4. Tools > Photoshop > Load Files … Read More »