@anvancy: Really appreciate you for posting it all over again, in such a nice and detailed way.

One question though - this is all well for flowers, et al. But what about skittish insects (live subjects), like say a dragon-fly or perhaps a butterfly. I am not so sure they would be patient enough while I click them more than once, focusing on different parts and keep clicking. They hardly have the patiece to "pose" for more than 2 shots!

two things..have a tripod in hand,your camera,and ample time.

lets take the example of the leaf shot you took.when you look at the shot what we can observe is that the right side of your photo is properly focused but the left side is blurred.

so when ever you take macros,divide your subject into 4 basic quadrants in your OVF or the LCD if it is available.so the total shots that you will take will be 5 and not 4.4 will be each of one quadrant and the 5th will be your centre image.as of course you can go beyond 5 and keep clicking intricate parts which can go 10+ in manual focus tracking.

take the above two examples.for the flower shot,the centre shot,left,extreme left,right,up and down.
for the lappy shot,i start from the mesh,and go in a straight line instead of a quadrant.remember that i am shooting at F8 for the flower.so at each quadrant i am getting enough sharpness per quandrant considered.
for the lappy i had kept at 2.8 for maximum bokeh.but still you see the keyboard is sharp till the end.


now we move to the next step.
after you got 5images..you open PHOTOCS4.
you then stack the images under FILE>SCRIPT>LOAD FILES IN STACK.i usually keep ALIGN IMAGES as checked.it eliminates any shake if there.

it then stacks all the images in different layers.so now you have a total 5 layers consisting of one image each.
selecting all layers,you then go to edit and AUTO BLEND LAYERS.and select seamless composition.let it process and you have the final sharp image.you can then further process it as per your liking.

one thing to be remembered is that the more blurred your other quadrants are while shooting a particular section,the better it will be for cs4 to eliminate it and give you a proper sharp image.if you keep on clicking at F16 and such,it might be difficult.so do check your bokeh before you shoot.

hope that helps.even i have not yet fully mastered this tech and is in learning mode.

anvancy.

Thanks for those tips! I will love to try this technique, but is there only Photoshop CS4 that is capable of creating those kind of 'focus-stacked' images? Any freewares available straight off the net which I can download right now?

i dont know if there is freeware.i think cs3 also has this feature but in a different way.

there is also a software called helicon focus pro.check that.

Great! Thanks.

it was not dead while clicking it.

raynox used.

anvancy.

Kriss ...here's the sunrise



without the girl though, i thought girls were meant for night outs

I have a girl in a sunset photo, but I can only post up later.