# Does PSE 11 do focus stacking?



## NancyMoranG (Nov 29, 2015)

trying to follow a tutorial on focus stacking. Says to go to File>Stack>load files
Of course, mine does not say that. I want to experiment with focus stacking if my program does it.
Anyone....

EDIT 15 minutes later :{.....
While killing time, I was deleting photos out of the Organizer, and when I right - click to delete, I just saw further down that it says 'stack'. 
Will it be somewhat straightforward from here? 
I don't have the photos yet that I want to stack....


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## astroNikon (Nov 29, 2015)

I've never tried it and I have PSE 11
but I searched for a video of it.
==>


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## NancyMoranG (Nov 29, 2015)

You mean there's more than the 1 video available on the Internet?!

I was following 1 from digital-photo- forum that seemed easy so I stuck with it.
Thanks Astro.


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## Overread (Nov 29, 2015)

There's also Combine ZP which is totally free to use hadleyweb 
And also Zerene Stacker and Helicon focus - the latter two are paid for options.


Each different stacking software option works a little differently to the others; each one has different controls to tweak. It's one of the few areas though where it is viable to own more than one software option because a fail in one can be a success in another and the complexities are such that you can't shoot with a method that will favour one software package over the other.

If you do it now and then one should suffice; if you're doing it a lot I'd say consider getting more than one since that way you've got options to play with especially as the initial input into creating a stack is quite involved in getting the right sequence of shots and processing them ready to be stacked.


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## FotosbyMike (Nov 30, 2015)

So I installed Helicon Focus(30 day Free Trial) this past week and did a stack... *:mind blown:*  compared to PS, HF is amazing and well worth the $$$. This saved me at least 5hrs of editing in PS, PS made all the edges very blurry and HF was so sharp. I can upload a few images later.


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