Focus Stacking Software Focus Stacking Software
4.5 · 841 votes

Download Focus Stacking Software for Macro and Product Shots

Focus Stacking Software merges a bracketed series into one image that is sharp from the nearest hair to the far edge, then softens the background behind it. Built for macro, coins, jewelry and small product work on Windows 10 and 11.

   
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Focus Stacking Software Screenshot.
At f/5.6, a macro lens gives you a sliver of sharpness, maybe a millimeter deep. You shoot the same subject twenty or fifty times, moving the focus a little each time, and each frame is sharp in a different place. SoftOrbits Focus Stacking Software lines up those frames and keeps the sharp part of each one, producing a single picture with the whole subject in focus.
One frame of the series - only one plane is in focus.
The same twelve frames merged - the whole flower is sharp.

A carabid beetle on a rail, 60 frames at f/4, from the tip of the mandible to the back of the elytra. The merge takes those 60 slivers and gives you one beetle.

How to download and use the Focus Stacking Software

Install it.
1

Install it

Download the Focus Stacking Software and run the installer. It requires Windows 10 or 11 on a 64-bit system. There is no 32-bit build because a deep series of high-resolution frames needs more address space than a 32-bit process can give it.

Add the frames.
2

Add the frames

Press Open series... and pick the frames from one shoot. The dialog takes the whole selection at once, dozens of files. The list shows every file that will go into the merge, in natural order, so you can check it against your shooting notes. All frames in a series must have the same pixel size. A stray shot of another size stops the run with a message naming the file.

Merge the stack.
3

Merge the stack

Press Stack. Alignment runs first, the merge second, and the progress bar shows the current stage.

Check the edges, then save.
4

Check the edges, then save

The merged image opens at full size. Zoom to 100% and check the thin parts, such as antennae, leg tips and a wire prong on a ring setting. Save it under a name you will still recognize in six months.

Why it holds up on a real stack

Memory you can predict.

Memory you can predict

Memory use follows the resolution of a single frame, roughly 200 MB per megapixel. The number of frames in the series does not change it. We measured the same shoot at 47 frames and at 53 frames; both used about 633 MB. If the first minute did not run you out of memory, the last one will not either.

   
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You see the result first, then decide

The finished render stays on your screen at full resolution, with no watermark. The unregistered version will not save that render to your drive, and you know this before you start.

   
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You see the result first, then decide.
Minutes on a plain CPU.

Minutes on a plain CPU

Seventy-four frames of a six-megapixel series merged in about a minute and a half on our test desktop, with no graphics card. Bigger frames take more time, roughly in step with the megapixels. RAW takes longer because every frame must be decoded first.

   
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The background does not have to stay sharp

Stacking makes everything sharp, including the twig behind the beetle and the shelf behind the coin, so the picture can read flat. You can open the aperture and lose the depth you shot the series for, or mask the background by hand in an editor. Here the frames were taken from near to far, so the frame a pixel came from gives its distance. One slider softens the background while the sharp part stays as the merge made it, original pixels and all sixteen bits. On a seventeen-megapixel result it takes about two and a half seconds.

   
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The background does not have to stay sharp.

Two ways to merge

Detail works on wavelet coefficients and holds fine texture, such as scales on a wing and the milling on a coin rim. Smooth builds a depth map across the series and blends by it, with a Radius setting that trades sharpness for calm. At Radius 3 the result keeps roughly four fifths of what Detail gives you; at Radius 32, about half. Both are one click apart, so you can run a difficult series twice.

Alignment is built in

Racking focus changes magnification a little, a rail creeps, and a finger nudges the tripod head. Alignment runs before the merge in two stages, matching each frame to its neighbor instead of a single reference, on an ECC criterion with an affine model. It covers the scale and shift caused by focus breathing. A subject that moved on its own cannot be rescued.

Whole folders in one pass

Switch the focus stacking program to the mode where each subfolder is its own series, then point it at the folder that holds them all. A night of shooting, forty specimens in forty folders, comes back as forty separate stacks. The unregistered version stacks the first folder and shows it before the license.

RAW in, 16-bit TIFF out

RAW files go in directly. DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, ORF and RW2 are decoded by LibRaw into linear 16-bit data before the merge. Ordinary JPEG, PNG and TIFF files are read as well. The output can be 16-bit TIFF for levels and local contrast, or JPEG or PNG.

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Runs on your PC

The installer is 18.4 MB. It has no neural model and no Python runtime. OpenCV, LibRaw and the image codecs are linked in statically. Your frames are read from your disk and written back to your disk, a requirement for museum and lab material that cannot leave the building.

Stop a run any time

Cancel does what it says. We stopped a 74-frame run halfway through the merge. The job came back cancelled, the 849 MB it had taken went back to 46 MB, and the window remained with the file list intact.

Push the background back out of focus

The merge measures how far every pixel sits, so you can soften the background with one slider for the amount, one for how much depth stays sharp, and a choice between Lens, which swells bright points into round highlights, and a plain soft look. Apply blur recomputes from the clean merge every time, so the sharp part returns as the original pixels.

Focus Stacking Software
Focus Stacking SoftwareDownload the Focus Stacking Software, load a bracketed series, and look at the merged result on screen before you decide anything.
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Who needs Focus Stacking Software

Insect and specimen photographers

Anything with legs, antennae or a mounted pin takes thirty to a hundred frames before it looks like a specimen rather than a blur with one sharp band. This is macro photography software first: rail, tripod, small apertures and long series. Collection records and field guides use these stacks.

Coin and collectible sellers

A coin shot at any angle has maybe a third of its surface in focus. Grading detail, die cracks and edge lettering all have to be readable in one image. Fifteen frames on a copy stand and a merge get you there faster than a lighting trick.

Product and jewelry photographers

A ring on a black acrylic sheet has near prongs and a far edge of the band. Photo stacking software solves the depth half of it; the light is still your problem. Watches, tools and anything with a deep front-to-back shape work the same way.

Formats it reads and writes

DNG, CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, ORF and RW2 go in as they are. JPEG, PNG and TIFF are read too, and the output can be 16-bit TIFF, JPEG or PNG.

FormatExtensionsReadWritten
RAW.DNG, .CR2, .CR3, .NEF, .ARW, .ORF, .RW2Yes, decoded by LibRawNo
TIFF.TIF, .TIFFYesYes, 16 bits per channel
JPEG.JPG, .JPEGYesYes
PNG.PNGYesYes
BMP.BMPYesNo
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Focus Stacking Software
Focus Stacking Software
Price
from $ 19.99 / month
Version
1.3
File Size
18.4 Mb
Last updated on
31/07/26
System Requirements
  • Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 (32/64 bit)
  • Intel i3, AMD Ryzen 5 or above
  • 4 GB of RAM or above
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® series 8 and 8M, Intel® HD Graphics 2000, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX 5600, AMD Radeon™ R600, Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330, Mobility FirePro™ series, Radeon™ R5 M230 or higher graphics card with up-to-date drivers
  • 1280 × 768 screen resolution, 32-bit color
  • 1 GB of free hard disk space or above

Frequently Asked Questions

Add the frames, press Stack and save the result. Shoot the series on a tripod or a rail with the exposure locked, load the whole set at once and leave Detail selected the first time. Look at the merged image at 100% before saving. If the thin edges look wrong, run it again on Smooth with Radius around 8 and compare the two.

Usually yes. At 1:1 with a macro lens at f/8 the zone in focus is well under a millimeter, and stopping down further loses you sharpness to diffraction faster than it buys you depth. Flat subjects shot straight on, a leaf or a stamp or a printed page, are fine in one frame. Anything with volume is not.

It depends on the subject's depth and how closely anyone will look. For a listing photo, specimen record or catalog shot, a merged image documents the object in one image. For a quick reference snapshot, one frame at a small aperture will do. The real cost is shooting time on the rail, not the merge.

Yes, up to saving. The merge runs and the result opens; a license writes that file to disk. Free focus stacking software does exist. Most of it is command-line only, with no interface. If you are comfortable in a terminal, it is a fair option.

Enough for the sharp zones to overlap. In practice, that is fifteen to forty frames for a coin or small product, and sixty to a hundred or more for a whole insect at high magnification. Overlap matters more than the count: fifty frames with generous overlap beat eighty taken in careless jumps.

A general editor can align layers and blend them, and five frames of a landscape are fine that way. Dedicated image stacking software handles forty or a hundred frames with a merge method built for that amount, without asking you to assemble a layer stack by hand.

Every RAW frame must be decoded first, and that decode takes 47 to 67 percent of the whole run on our measurements. A single 17-megapixel DNG occupies around 100 MB when expanded in memory. Shooting the series as JPEG is a legitimate choice when the result is going on a listing page rather than into an archive.

You need a tripod or a focus rail. A hand-held burst will not come out clean, and version 1 has no feature-based alignment to rescue one. That is an honest limit and not a setting you have missed. In the field, on a subject that will not sit still, stacking is often the wrong tool anyway and one frame at a smaller aperture is the right one.

Behind an antenna or leg tip, the background is sharp in some frames and blurred in others, so the merge has to choose. Smooth with a larger Radius softens it, and more overlap helps too. Anything left after that must be retouched by hand in your editor because version 1 has no retouch brush.

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit only. For frames in the 24 to 45 megapixel range, 8 GB of RAM is the sensible floor. For RAW series, 16 GB and an SSD holding the source folder will help you more than a faster processor does.

Yes, without masking by hand. Background blur sits at the bottom of the same panel and uses the depth map from the merge. Set the blur, set how much depth stays sharp, and pick Lens if bright points should swell into round highlights. Where the background was out of focus in every frame, there is nothing to measure depth from and the software guesses. Shoot the series so it covers the background as well.

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Author: SoftOrbits (English)
4.5
Avg. rating: 4.5 from 841 votes
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