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Participant
July 8, 2025
Open for Voting

Focus Stacking Photoshop 2025

  • July 8, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1159 views

I'm running PS2025 on an M1 Mac OS Sequioa 15.5 and I've been trying to get 65 images to autoblend without leaving blurred artifacts behind. I grew frustrated with PS not being able to produce suitable images from the auto blend method earlier this year before the price hike and I downloaded a trial software that was able to generate a flawless focus stacked image with no blurred artifacts left behind. My concern is that focus stacking has been a part of PS for a while now and is still very subpar at best. Are there any planned upgrades to this feature? We can remove people & wires, get a near perfect mask in great detail, generate fictional creations that didn't exist in real time at the point of capture using Artificial Intelligence. However, the algorithm to produce a clean focus stacked image suffers. I simply would love to know if work is being done to fix the slop that Adobe Focus Stacking genrates and when can we expect to see this implemented? I didn't fuss to much with the rate hike on your plans but paying for a feature that is not up to par is highly frustrating when realizing I now have to invest in buying another software that actually does work FLAWLESSLY. Am I to believe that the High and Mighty Devs at ADOBE can't sort out the focus stacking algorithm and release a usable version for their end users? Please advise ASAP.

 

P.S. I've included examples for you to see what your software produces versus what the standalone software is highly capable of producing .

2 replies

Participant
July 8, 2025

I only posted here, as a bug,  because the Online Chat Support Agent told me to fill out this form and the Development Team would respond. I should have known they would just direct me into an online support forum and disregard my inquiry altogether. I recently purchased Luminar NEO and their online support is email based but quick and efficient at answering their customers. I guess Adobe doesn't really value my subscription and sadly it may be time to move on.  Tested Luminar's photo stacking and it performed better than Adobe PS 2025. I would attach the image here but since it's just community and moderators viewing post I suppose there's really no point. So dissapointed in this but that's life sometimes you just have to suck it up and move on.

davescm
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 8, 2025

Adobe tend not to give advance notice of plans for changes in software.

I've moved your post from 'bugs' to 'ideas'. A better focus stacking function, AI based or not, would be welcome.

I also use Zerene Stacker and, before purchasing, also tested Helion Focus. Neither are flawless, but both outperformed the built in focus stacking function in Photoshop.

Dave