Martin Evening
Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers
498
Depth of field blending
The Edit ➯ Auto-Blend Layers command allows you to blend
objects that were shot using different points of focus and blend
them to produce a single image with optimal focus.
1 I began by going to Bridge and selected a
group of photographs that had been shot at
different points of focus. I then went to the
Tools menu and chose Photoshop ➯ Load
Files Into Photoshop Layer.
2 This opened the five selected photos as a
multi-layered image in Photoshop. With all the
layers selected, I then went to the Edit menu,
chose ‘Auto-Align Layers…’ and selected the
Auto projection option. This aligned the layers
as shown here.
499
Layers, selections and masking
Chapter 9
3 The next step was to merge the layered
photos together, which I did by going to
the Edit menu again and this time I selected
‘Auto-Blend Layers…’ Here, I selected ‘Stack
Images’ and made sure the ‘Seamless Tones
and Colors’ option was checked.
4 To get the best results it is important to
carry out the Auto-Align step before you apply
the Auto-Blend. As you can see, this last step
carried out a pixel blending of the individual
layers and added layer masks to each based
on a calculation of where the sharpest detail
was on each layer. The success of this depth
of field blending technique is also down to
the care with which you shoot the original
photographs. The more photos you shoot,
bracketed at different focal distances, the better
the end result will be.