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Stacks and Photomerge
I learned something neat-o today. In Photoshop CS3, there's this new feature called "Stacks." It's basically taking a bunch of images that you photograph of the same subject - but using different f-stop ranges to bring out the most of the shadow and highlight detail in the image. For example, you might make one exposure spot on, and then you make several other exposures of the SAME subject, SAME position, but with different f-stop/shutter speed ranges. Some people do 1/2 stop increments to get subtle effects, some people do extreme 2 stop increments to get dramatic results.
One thing you have to remember though, f-stop also affects your depth of field. If you have a fairly small f-stop like F22, and you go down to f18, I doubt there will be a significant difference. However, if you have a large f-stop like F5.6, and you go to f2.8, you're likely to have some issues with your background being blurred out or important elements that you wish to have included distorted from your image. If that's the case, then your best bet is to manipulate the SHUTTER SPEED to get the "f-stop" increment effect.
Anyway, onto stacks.
The photographer takes several images in various exposure ranges, and loads them all into adobe bridge CS3. .RAW or .JPEG, it really doesn't matter which format is used. Then, you load ALL the images into photoshop, and then run a neat script called stacks or if you're a fan of Dr. Russell Brown (famous British photoshop guru), you can use his "Place-o-matic" stack script, which essentially does the same thing for you.
What this does, in effect, is analyze ALL the pixels in ALL the images, averages them out for the best dynamic range, THEN creates one composite image from all the data from the images. FANTASTIC stuff. You can get the best of one image in there, and eliminate the worst of your noise and blur, and enhance your image's mystique. It's really awesome stuff, I can't get enough of it.
If you're curious more about stacks and scripts you can use for photoshop, I encourage you to visit Dr. Russell Brown's website - he really does some incredible stuff. The website url can be found here: http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.h
One thing you have to remember though, f-stop also affects your depth of field. If you have a fairly small f-stop like F22, and you go down to f18, I doubt there will be a significant difference. However, if you have a large f-stop like F5.6, and you go to f2.8, you're likely to have some issues with your background being blurred out or important elements that you wish to have included distorted from your image. If that's the case, then your best bet is to manipulate the SHUTTER SPEED to get the "f-stop" increment effect.
Anyway, onto stacks.
The photographer takes several images in various exposure ranges, and loads them all into adobe bridge CS3. .RAW or .JPEG, it really doesn't matter which format is used. Then, you load ALL the images into photoshop, and then run a neat script called stacks or if you're a fan of Dr. Russell Brown (famous British photoshop guru), you can use his "Place-o-matic" stack script, which essentially does the same thing for you.
What this does, in effect, is analyze ALL the pixels in ALL the images, averages them out for the best dynamic range, THEN creates one composite image from all the data from the images. FANTASTIC stuff. You can get the best of one image in there, and eliminate the worst of your noise and blur, and enhance your image's mystique. It's really awesome stuff, I can't get enough of it.
If you're curious more about stacks and scripts you can use for photoshop, I encourage you to visit Dr. Russell Brown's website - he really does some incredible stuff. The website url can be found here: http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.h