Photo Stacking Tips in Lightroom

Photos have a longer focal length typically that makes it difficult to focus on all objects at once. This is why when you compare an actual scenario with a digital photo, you may face difficulty adjusting your focus.

Photo stacking is a key technique used by professional photographers to come up with polished photos that stand out from others.

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Photo stacking is also called focus stacking. Adobe Lightroom has a feature called Auto-Blend Layers to fix the focal length and perform photo stacking. Want to master the art of professional photography? Read on as we reveal the secrets.

What is Photo Stacking?

Before we head into how to improve in-focus slivers, let’s go to the basics. What is photo stacking, anyway?

Photo stacking is increasingly used in different branches of modern photography- landscape photography and product photography. Photo stacking will help a landscape photographer to focus the background, foreground or middle ground of an image. Similarly, in product photography, a photographer can set focus on one frame at a time, instead of an entire image. They can move the focus on to another frame when needed. It is useful when there are multiple products in a single image and the photographer needs to focus on only one product at a time.

How to Photo Stack in Lightroom?

Curious to know how photo stacking is done in Lightroom? Just follow us:

1. 1. Launch Adobe Lightroom.

1. 1. Click on the File menu and select Import photos and video.

1. 1. Select the photos that have been shot from the same angle and import them.

1. 1. Set manual focus.

1. 1. Select the imported photos and make sure they all are stored in the same collection. You cannot stack photos when they are stored in multiple collections.

1. 1. Click on the Photo menu, followed by Open as layers in Photoshop.

1. 1. Lightroom will display layer count in the thumbnails.

1. 1. Choose your desired layer and click on the Edit menu, select Auto-Align.

1. 1. Select Auto and then click on OK.

1. 1. Select all the layers in the group.

1. 1. Click on the Edit menu, select Auto-Blend Layers.

1. Choose Stack Images, and then click on OK.

Benefits of Photo Stacking

Photo Stacking offers many benefits. Some of them are given below:

• • Photo stacking helps photographers fix photos that are out-of-focus

• • Photo stacking helps fix issues caused due to poorly set camera settings

• • Fix fuzziness and digital noise in your images

• • Adjust the image exposure

• Sharpen your images from the front to the back

Bonus Tip: Fix Duplicate Photos in Lightroom

We’ve all faced it: You capture some great shots, transfer them to PC and then import them into Lightroom. Some other day, when you try to search your shots, the results are flooded with too many duplicate entries of the photos that you don’t need. Thankfully, not so with PictureEcho!

Lightroom Duplicate Finder PictureEcho

PictureEcho is a specialized tool that supports Lightroom duplicate cleaning. It allows you to find duplicates of two types- exact matching duplicates that match byte-to-byte and data similar matching duplicates that have some variations. Besides, you can use PictureEcho to find duplicate images stored on your hard disk and review the results straight from the PictureEcho window without needing to open any image independently. It makes it easy and fun to delete duplicates without much effort on your part. Here’s how:

1. 1. Close Adobe Lightroom, if it’s already open.

1. 1. Download and install Lightroom Duplicate Finder PictureEcho.

1. 1. Click on the Adobe Lightroom tab.

1. 1. Select one of the scan modes from Exact Match and Similar Match.

1. 1. Click on Start Search.

1. 1. Once the scan is finished, you’ll be able to see a list of thumbnails arranged in multiple groups based on their similarity.

1. 1. PE gives you a checkbox to manually mark or unmark the images. But we recommend using one of the automatic selection patterns to make the task quicker and easier. Click on Select Duplicates and choose one of the following options:
      • • Retain high-resolution image in each group: Keeping high-resolution image versions will give you better quality but compromise on the storage space.
      • • Retain low-resolution image in each group: Keeping a lower resolution image in each group will take comparatively smaller storage but compromise the picture quality.
      • • Retain the newest image in each group: If you’ve edited some images, you may want to keep the newest versions and delete the older (original) ones.
      • • Retain the oldest image in each group: If you’ve edited some images and wish to retain the original versions, use this option.
      • • Retain the biggest image in each group: Use this option to keep the biggest photo in each group.
      • • Retain the smallest image in each group: Use this option to save maximum storage and only keep the smallest photo in each group.
      • Select by image locations: Use this option to mark or unmark files based on their directories.

1. Now, click on Select Action and choose your desired action (Permanent Delete/ Move to folder).