Focus-stack shots for supreme sharpness

Use Affinity Photo’s Focus Merge command to combine a series of exposures into one mighty macro shot

- James Paterson

When you shoot close-up macro subjects, the depth of field will be very shallow, and the plane of sharpness your camera can capture may only stretch a few millimetres across the subject, even when you use narrower apertures. It can be a struggle to record a sharp close-up from front to back. If you need total sharpness, try focus-stacking.

This involves taking a series of shots using a tripod-mounted camera, adjusting the focus ring after each frame so that a different part of the scene is in focus. The sharp parts can then be merged into one super-detailed macro photo.

Affinity Photo offers a powerful focus stacking tool called Focus Merge. Not only is it easy to use, it also produces excellent results most of the time. However, no focus-stacking software is perfect: you might see messy blurred areas depending on the intricacy of the image.

1 Select your image set