Frank it's an interesting image of some nice plants but it's not clear what DOF recovery process you are using.
Dave
Hi Dave, thank you for viewing and commentling.
I'm still exploring the focus stacking process for extending DoF. This image was taken at about 45° to an outcropping where the right side was inches from the camera and the left edge was several feet away. Once I get the shooting and processing down pat I'll be looking for more interesting compositions that can make the best use of this technique.
In the end, I'm hoping to be able to produce fascinating high DoF images that look more like what we see with our eyes and less like a typical shallow DoF snapshot.
In this case, for example, if I let Photoshop's Edit/Auto-Merge capability process the 8 shots I took to get this image, it doesn't always make the best choice of sharpness from the 8 shots for a specific object or part of an object in the scene. Objects that are significantly in front of, or behind others that are highly blurred are often missed in the processing.
I can compare the final image to each original and often can merge back in sharper objects to the final image.
Another situation I am noticing is that an out-of-focus object will 'bloom' and sometimes block the ability to select a sharper object behind it.
Thirdly, Photoshop seems to change the brightness of selected objects slightly so if I try to blend back in the sharper object, I sometimes see the selection outline that Photoshop uses in the Auto-Merge process. I find that if I take the merged copy back to a fresh set of layered images I don't get the selection outline issue.
Although these aren't artistically great images, I am hoping that others will get excited about exploring the possibilities so we can collaborate on how to perfect the process.
Sounds interesting Frank. It's a fairly complex blending exercise and I'd imagine it would depend a lot on the nature of the image. I think you have more patience than me !
Dave