How to turn 7 photos into one (Lightroom 6) (microscope) (Depth of field)

[mraroid]

Hello....

I have taken several photos of some plant material under a microscope.  My depth of field is shallow.  I was told that if I take a series of photos, each with something different in focus, I could magically combine the photos into one photo.  The one photo will show the entire dept of field as being in focus.  Well, at least as represented by my seven photos.

I was directed to Lightoom 6 which I just installed yesterday.  I have read about "stacking" but I have been unable to find out how to "stack" my photos and then turn them into one image.  I am using a modern PC running windows 10.

I could not find a pdf of the manual for Lightroom 6.  I did find a manual for Lightroom "CC Help".  Is this the correct manual for Lightroom 6?

I looked at videos on YouTube until later in the evening yesterday.  I saw how to make a stack, expand a stack, collapse a stack and add and remove photos in a stack.  But nothing on how to combine my seven photos into one photo.

Have I been misinformed?  Or can Lightroom do this?

Perhaps you can point me to a manual and page number?  Or maybe a You Tube video I missed?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

jack

[SeanMcCormack · Accepted solution]

Stacking in Lightroom terms is putting similar images together with the best image on top, hiding the others. It's not the same as Focus Stacking for increased depth of field. You need Photoshop or Helicon Focus for that.

[mraroid]

Thank you Sean for the help.  I am running Photoshop version 10.0.1.  A quick search and I could not find 'Focus Stacking' in my version of Photoshop.  I can move this to the Photoshop forum.  Do you happen to know of fthe top of your head if my version of Photoshop will do Focue Stacking?

I will look into Helicon Focus.

Thanks again for the help.

jack

[JP Hess]

I think you have been misinformed, or perhaps you have misunderstood. Stacking in Lightroom enables you to group photos into a stack so that they don't take up as much room in the filmstrip display or in the catalog grid view. But it is not a way to combine images into a single image. Lightroom has features to merge photos to create a panorama or to create an HDR image. If you highlight all of the images and then right click on one of them you will see a Photomerge option available and you can choose between panorama or HDR. But I don't know if that is going to provide the results you are looking for. I suspect you will have better success using Photoshop or some other pixel editing software that will allow you to stack your images using layers.

[Bob Somrak]

Lightroom 6 can not do focus stacking.  It can do HDR and Panoramas.  Hopefully focus stacking will be in a future upgrade.  I used a plugin called Lr/Enfuse (Google it) for my landscape focus stacking/exposure blending but since I upgraded to Lrcc I now use Photoshop.  Lr/Enfuse worked well for landscapes but I don't know how well it would work for microscope stacking.  There are several dedicated focus stacking programs that may be better.

[SeanMcCormack]

Hey Jack, it's part of the Photomerge command in Photoshop. I honestly don't remember which version it was introduced in. When you run it, you choose between stacking and panorama.

[mraroid]

Thanks everyone.  My Photoshop is from CS3.  It looks like I need photoshop from CS4 to do Focus Stacking.  I will look into Lr/Enfuse and Helicon Focus.

Thanks again everyone.

jack