Stacking

Once you’ve selected frames in the filmstrip, pressing S (or clicking Stack selected images [S] →) hands them off to the stacker. This page explains what’s happening, how to tune it, and how to choose between the two methods.

What focus stacking does

Macro depth of field is shallow — often a millimeter or less at high magnification. A single frame can only have a thin slice of the subject in focus. Focus stacking combines multiple frames shot at different focus distances into one image where every region is sharp.

Macro Studio’s stack happens in three phases:

Alignment — corrects for focus breathing (magnification change between frames), camera movement, and rotation. Each frame gets warped into the same coordinate space as the others.
Sharpness analysis — for each pixel, the stacker measures which frame has the sharpest signal at that location.
Blending — pixels are pulled from the sharpest frames and combined into the output.

The blending step is where the two methods differ.

Stacking methods

The Method dropdown (visible under the Advanced toggle in the Library footer) chooses how blending happens.

Pyramid (default)

Decomposes each frame into a Laplacian pyramid — a stack of spatial frequency bands from coarse to fine. At each level of the pyramid, the stacker picks the band with the strongest local sharpness, then reconstructs the final image from the chosen bands.

The pyramid approach gives smooth transitions between focus zones because adjacent pixels at the same pyramid level blend continuously, and it tends to render fine structures like antennae, hair, and bristles cleanly. It also produces the cleanest backgrounds — no topographic-line artifacts in out-of-focus areas.

Best for: Most subjects. The right default in nearly every case.

Depth Map

Computes a depth map from the focus stack — for each pixel, which frame is sharpest? — using a graph-cut optimizer, then uses that map to select source pixel values. The graph cut lets pixels from multiple frames coexist on the same subject, which helps when subject geometry overlaps itself.

Best for: Subjects where multiple parts of the subject cross over each other — an insect with intersecting legs, a plant with stems and leaves layered front-to-back — and the depth structure is more complex than what Pyramid’s per-band selection can resolve. Also useful when the source frames are out of focus order, or when a stack is unusually long with smooth-textured subjects.

Watch out for: Topology-line artifacts (faint contour-map rings) in smooth out-of-focus backgrounds, and occasional smearing on very fine structures like antennae. If Pyramid handles your subject cleanly, stick with it — Depth Map is the tool for the cases where Pyramid can’t.

Running both at once

Check Run all methods in the footer to run Pyramid and Depth Map in parallel. Both results appear in the history strip after the stack completes, so you can A/B-compare them and keep the better one (or save both).

You can set this as the default in Preferences → Run all stacking methods by default, which trades extra processing time (~40% over running one method, since the alignment step is shared) for never having to wonder which method to pick.

Advanced controls

By default, Macro Studio uses good defaults and hides the advanced controls. To see them, click the Advanced toggle in the Library footer.

Detail (Pyramid only)

The kernel size used for the per-pixel sharpness analysis. Range 1–31, default 15.

Larger — averages sharpness over a bigger neighborhood. Smoother result, less prone to noise-driven artifacts.
Smaller — finer per-pixel discrimination. Sharper edges but can amplify noise on textured surfaces.

Most users never need to touch this. Worth trying if you see seam artifacts (try larger) or if smooth subjects look mushy (try smaller).

Sharpen

Output sharpening applied after blending. Range 1.0–2.0, default 1.0 (none).

1.0 — no extra sharpening; pure stacker output.
1.5 — moderate boost. Good for web sharing where the output will be downscaled.
2.0 — strong boost. For prints, or for stacks that came out noticeably soft.

Sharpening is non-destructive — it’s baked into the saved file but tuneable as you re-stack.

Depth (Pyramid only)

Number of pyramid levels used in the decomposition. Range 0–8, default 0 (auto).

0 lets Macro Studio pick a depth based on input resolution. Higher values give more separation between coarse and fine frequencies, which can help on very large images. Most users should leave it at auto.

Align frames

On by default. Corrects for focus breathing, camera movement, and rotation. Turn off only when shooting with a motorized macro rail that holds magnification fixed across the stack — in that case, all frames already share a coordinate space and skipping alignment is purely a speed optimization. Turning alignment off won’t improve quality.

What “stacking” actually outputs

When you hit Stack, the result appears in two places:

The history strip at the bottom of Develop view — every stack and edit ends up here. Each thumbnail shows the settings used (pyramid d15 s1 da = Pyramid, detail 15, sharpen 1.0, depth auto).
The center canvas — your active result, ready for masking, adjustments, crop, retouch, and Save.

Stacking does not write any files to disk on its own — the result lives in Macro Studio’s in-memory project until you Save…. This is by design: you can stack, edit, re-stack with different settings, and pick the best version before committing to disk.